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Are you are a reluctant writer? Do you groan when you sit down at the keyboard, knowing that you need to knock something out fast? Do you feel unsure of your communication skills even when you “only” need to craft an email? Well, you’re not alone. Even professional communicators have days where their writing chops seem to be utter lacking.

Fortunately for us all, there is a ton of help out there. I recently came upon a short but potent guide from Ragan, “10 ways to improve your writing today.” If nothing else, the promise of instant gratification prompted me to read it, and I’m glad I did. By the way, it’s only about 2 pages long, so I recommend you click the link and have at it.

My five favorite tips

1. “Have a point.” Arguably, this may be the most important tip, because so many of us don’t necessarily know what we’re going to say when we start writing. We end up meandering, to the annoyance of our readers. The Ragan guide says, “Two related points in the same article or email are fine. Two disparate messages should be offered separately.”
2. “Look up words.” If you’re not sure of what a word means, look it up. I’m a big fan of dictionary.com. It’s fast and efficient and keeps you from looking foolish.
3. “Punctuate properly.” Yes, learning the basics of punctuation seems like a bore. But keeping a copy of “Eats, Shoots, and Leaves” or “Woe is I” is a great idea, and believe it or not, these books are funny as well as informative. Here, a big thank you to Miss Thompson, my 10^th grade English teacher, a stickler for proper punctuation and mistress of the diagrammed sentence.
4. “Match pronouns to their antecedents.” Sounds a bit fussy, doesn’t it? Yet it’s important to be clear about what a pronoun refers to. Ragan’s example: “Vera went over to Malvina’s house so they could work on her penmanship. Whose penmanship? Vera went over to Malvina’s house so they could work on Vera’s penmanship.”
5. “Cut it back.” As Ragan puts it, “Prune your writing as you would the dead branches of a shrub.” So often, we writers (reluctant or otherwise) are fighting a deadline. The words may pour out of us—or they may not—but we feel that we don’t have the luxury of time to review our work. If you’ve finished your piece at 3 pm and you need to deliver it by 4, take a walk around the block, clean the litter box, or have a cup of tea. You’ll be amazed how these simple activities will shift your perspective and make it easier to do some judicious cutting.

Good writers are typically good thinkers. If you see yourself as a good thinker but have some qualms about your writing, I recommend taking the time to improve your writing. It really will make a difference in your life.

Undrey

 

We writers—ahem, content creators—love precise word use. We tend to find ourselves irritated by the sloppy or silly and work hard to find, as the French would say, “le mot juste.”

To this end, I call your attention to a wonderful article from a few years back by Laura Hale Brockway. Entitled “32 alternatives to ‘a lot,’” it’s Ms. Brockway’s indictment of our tendency to use the term “a lot,” well, a lot when we want to describe an amount. A couple of her examples:

• “I try not to ask for a lot of help from the IT Department.”
• Our style guide does not appear to be used by a lot of people.” (Too true, alas.)
• There’s not a lot we can do about the CEO’s use of run-on sentences.

I must confess that I use “a lot” way too frequently. It is a convenient “grab ‘n go” expression, just waiting obligingly to be of service. But, as Ms. Brockway notes, “Its use in formal writing is lazy and colloquial. And as a quantifier, it’s meaningless. How much is ‘a lot,’ exactly?”

She suggests 32 alternatives, many of which I like a lot (woops). Consider, for example:

• A great deal
• enormously
• myriad
• plethora
• tons

Check out her article for the rest of the list and, of course, give your word power muscles a work out by adding to it.

While I’m at it, I’d like to take dead aim at “awesome,” which has completely lost its meaning and, in my opinion, has become so annoying as to be worth banning from use ever again. Undoubtedly, you have candidates for your own list, and I’d like to see them.

kotokomi

OK, so you’ve taken a smartphone photo or two, but you’re not really impressed with how they’ve come out. You want to do a better job, because reasons and opportunities to take a quick pic abound, both personally and professionally.

This article, “15 tips for improving your photos and videos” by Russell Working (@ByWorking) offers great ideas from professional photographers on how to take better pictures and videos. As a writer, I should probably be alarmed by shrinking attention spans and the resulting popularity of visual communication, but hey, you gotta move with the times. And besides, I believe that visuals and words have always complemented each other. Look at screenplays and infographics. But I digress.

Mr. Working presents 15 tips; I’m going to go for my five most favorite. For more good ideas, read his article, which is worth the five minutes it will take you.

1. Get up close. This advice came from Robert Capa, a renowned war photographer who stepped on a landmine and died. You’re not likely to run those risks, and I think there’s no denying that the closer you get, the more dramatic/effective your shots will be.
2. Fill the frame. This is great advice when you’re photographing a person, your CEO or 100-year-old Great Aunt Nellie, for example. One photographer advises not to put your subject’s head at the center of the frame, which, in my opinion, would be deer-in-the-headlights.
3. Leverage light. What this means is moving your subject near the light, though not into direct sunlight. You want to avoid those dull, murky-looking shots where your subject sort of gets lost. One photographer recommends putting a window at the back of the shot. (Just watch out for the halo effect, which famously earned former PM David Cameron a certain amount of mockery.)
4. Vary settings. People love novelty, so try both formal and informal settings. Informal settings humanize your subject, though I recommend avoid those fakey “human” shots such as the one of President Trump at the wheel of a huge truck.
5. Go for different angles. Shoot from above, shoot from below. One photographer points out that if you kneel or lie on the ground, “buildings will appear taller and more majestic.” If are above your subjects—say for a group photo—you “avoid unflattering squatting poses.”

I’m a terrible smartphone photographer, though I plan to improve. What I like about this form of photography is that it feels unintimidating. Smartphone cameras are better than ever, and people have taken some gorgeous pictures with them. I’ve come to realize that I’ll likely never buy that big expensive Pentax that my Uncle Ernie pulled out on every possible occasion. Fast, friendly, and accessible is the key here, and I think most of us are up for that.

Kitticha Polpaisal — 123rf.com

The idea for this post about using callouts to promote a product or service came from an e-newsletter that popped into my inbox recently. Written by Marcia Yudkin of The Marketing Minute, it was entitled “Crown Neglected Content or Products.” That title piqued my interest.

Ms. Yudkin notes, “When you have a lengthy lineup of products or services, the usual practice is simply to highlight what’s new”—often in a callout box next to a product. But she points out that this technique doesn’t just work for new products. It’s also highly effective for “older or unjustly ignored contenders.” Callouts like “Worth a look!” or “Best Value,” in my opinion, can function rather like a guerilla re-launch.

My local library, the wonderful San Mateo City Library does callouts for new books, of course. (I’ve enjoyed many a Quick Pick.) But it also does something wonderful for older books that may not be circulating as well as it seems they should. And that is to create displays around a theme, such as containerized gardening or World War II history, essentially calling out worthy content. These books are available for check-out, and they carry the library’s implicit endorsement of their merit as good reads.

Another real-world example

I get occasional mailings from a purveyor of ridiculously expensive skin care products. The most recent was for the company’s “Employee discount event — Save 50% on our favorites!” Sprinkled throughout the brochure were testimonials from customers and employees as well as the callout “Employee Favorite.” Yes, this is advertising, but it also delivers a message that prospects tend to trust. As Ms. Yudkin puts it, “If those who deal with this stock day in and day out have particular affection for this item, I figure it merits my attention.”

In my opinion, callouts are a wonderful, simple way to boost excellent products that may have been overtaken by the novelty of the new. A sucker for hope in a jar, I’m not ashamed to say that I fell for the pitch.

lukeruk

 

In her article “8 secrets to effective communication,” Michelle M. Smith lets us in on principles of neurolinguistics. What is neurolinguistics, exactly? According to Wikipedia, “Neurolinguistics is the study of the neural mechanisms in the human brain that control the comprehension, production, and acquisition of language. As an interdisciplinary field, neurolinguistics draws methods and theories from fields such as neuroscience, linguistics, cognitive science, communication disorders, and neuropsychology.” More simply, as defined in Ms. Smith’s article,

“Neurolinguistics is the study of how the brain understands and produces language, so it drives how we communicate with ourselves and how we process verbal input.”

If you manage people—your child, significant other, direct reports, and colleagues—neurolinguistics can help you be more successful. I’m guessing that it can help you develop a reasonably good relationship with someone you might otherwise have never bothered to get to know.

The “8 secrets” Ms. Smith refers to are pattern filters that reveal how someone’s brain works. It will take some time and energy to figure out where the person you’re communicating with is coming from, but the process is bound to be fascinating, as is anything in which you have a stake.

Here’s a quick look at the eight patterns.

Direction

Is someone motivated toward pleasure or avoidance of pain and loss? Most of us are motivated both ways, yet one is our primary mode of operation. Ask a question that reveals that mode and listen very carefully to the response.

Reason

This filter helps you understand why people do what they do (“take action). Some of us act on possibilities and talk about opportunity or choice or variety. Others talk about necessity and outline process, reason, and the importance of finding the right solution.

Frame of Reference

How do we judge our actions? Do we reflect on them or seek external feedback? Those who are internally focused need less feedback and recognition than the externally focused, who “can be more easily persuaded to another viewpoint.”

Convincer

What kind of experience must you have to become convinced of something? Which of your five senses do you use? And how often must something be demonstrated? Someone who knows what convinces you of something will be better able to persuade you to their point of view.

Relationship

Do you look for—that is, do you sort—similarities or differences? Ms. Smith points out that “difference” people don’t build rapport well and may have “a problem with routines, relationships or job stability.” If you tell them what to do, they’ll want to do the opposite. You should communicate with “similarity” people by helping them develop routines that work.

Attention

Attention is all about “how people show other people they’re paying attention.” Self-sorters tune out until they’re directly concerned or interested by something being said. Those who sort by others connect with eye contact and offer on-the-spot feedback, which is critical to well-functioning teams and in service industries. Ms. Smith points out that self-sorters can appear selfish, while sort-by-other folks can come across as martyrs.

Focus

Are you a big-picture person (general) or are you turned on by details and sequences (specific)? One way to uncover focus is to ask someone how they solve a problem. Do they respond with a summary or with specifics?

Action

How/when do you take action? Active sorters want to move ahead fast. (The “beachmaster” preference in Meyers-Briggs?) Reflective sorters prefer analysis and consideration of options, and they want to understand a situation before acting. Their answer to the question “How do you learn new things?” provides valuable clues.

As a writer, I love to listen to what people have to say either in spontaneous conversation or when asked about what they think or how they would do something. Actions are important, of course, but words are critical. Think about how a great manager or a hostage negotiator works and why they get the results they do.

deklofenak — 123rf.com

 

During my time in PR, I was truly fascinated by executive communications—specifically the process of making sure that a CEO wouldn’t falter or make damaging revelations when called upon to speak in public. Note that I’m talking here about how to handle inquiries from the press regarding a mishap or those put-you-on-the-spot queries in quarterly conference calls.

Andy Barr, a PR professional from the UK has written a wonderful article “8 steps to take before your CEO goes on camera,” that is cynical, informative, and devilishly funny. (That dry British wit, don’t ya know.)

Here are my fave hot tips. (And by the way, all this applies to real life, too.)

Prepare

What a concept. Make a list of the awkward questions your CEO could be asked—“Why have your sales tanked?”, for example—and make sure there are reasonable answers. These questions will likely come up even before the CEO is in front of the cameras or on that all-important call.

Train

Do role plays. Mr. Barr points out that this is a fun opportunity to be a little bit mean to the CEO, all in the spirit of education, of course. This kind of practice is critical if your organization is caught doing something wrong. He recommends training directors as well as the person at the top to handle awkward questions.

Decide

Do you want to do the interview to begin with? This is critical. If your organization has engaged in wrongdoing or negligence, then perhaps a director should handle the interview. As Mr. Barr points out, “ … you may choose not to put your CEO up at an early stage and instead use a director who …  gets the boot to appease the media later down the line.” (Ouch.)

Excise annoying filler words

Eliminating them definitely takes time and practice. Those “ands” and “ums” are distracting and make the most seasoned executive seem unsure and unpoised. (Mr. Barr says “Beat it out of them!”)

 

Create great soundbites

Soundbites make CEOs memorable. They’re terrific for promotional clips, and even if they’re not used that way, they may live on in legend. They’re also important in this age of shortened attention spans.

Build Bridges

That is, “use a few words to ignore the question you have been asked and, instead answer a question that you would prefer to have been asked.” Don’t you love this technique?

Father to teenage daughter: Young lady, do you realize how late you are? We expected you  two hours ago!

Teenage daughter to father: That’s a good point, Dad. But don’t you think it’s more relevant to discuss why more attention hasn’t been paid to keeping the tires on the van properly inflated?

Mr. Barr concludes his article with a YouTube news clip of an interview with Nick Varney, an amusement park executive whose “The Smiler” ride malfunctioned, seriously injuring four young riders. It’s a difficult interchange to listen to, but it’s instructive and offers keen insight into why media training is so important.

 

I dedicate this post to Dick Claeys, with whom I worked briefly at Neale-May. As a media trainer, he has no equal.

faithie — 123rf.com

 

 

As an introvert and someone who sometimes must force herself to concentrate, I truly dislike open-plan offices. All that distracting noise and movement, plus the general android-y creepiness of noise-canceling headphones. Now, it appears that there is another legitimate reason for animus.

Thanks to Geoffrey James, who writes for Inc.com, for these thoughts. At first, I thought they were a bit overstated, but now I think he’s on to something. And if you find these ideas interesting, you will probably find his sexual harassment-oriented indictment of the open-plan office interesting as well.

In Mr. James’ opinion, open-plan offices create particular stress for women, because—and he’s blunt here—they force women to focus on being eye-candy, rather than on moving their careers forward. He notes a study by Anglia Ruskin University and the University of Bedfordshire that tracked employees who moved from traditional offices into an open plan layout over a three-year period. The study found that women were “more conscious of their visibility and often found this unsettling rather than liberating.”

The net effect is that women who spend time in male-dominated open spaces think they need to dress in a certain way. Mr. James notes that the open-plan office “also creates a major disadvantage for women who don’t fit within our dominant culture’s rather limited definition of female beauty.” He also notes that some of the women felt intimidated because “their presence—visible from everywhere in the room—made them the immediate center of attention because of how they looked, rather than their role in the company.”

Oh my. While I do think Mr. James makes a valid point, I can’t help but wonder if the turns of the head a woman may experience when she walks into an open area may have more to do with her male colleagues lack of engagement in their work and our generally shorter attention spans and ability to be disrupted.

What do you think?

dotshock / 123RF Stock Photo

 

I just finished an excellent article about getting ahead and wish that someone had clued me in at the beginning of my work life. Brenda Wensil and Kathryn Heath of Flynn Heath Holt Leadership offer four helpful tips that pretty much anyone (men, too) can use to build relationships. And make no mistake, building relationships is what a successful career is  all about.

As the authors put it, “There are typically two ways to get things done professionally. One way is explicit, established and formalized … The other way is informal, highly nuanced and relationship based.” They note that both ways are important but the women they see in their coaching practice “overwhelmingly struggle more than men to take advantage of informal networking situations.” They add that the problem is systemic: women are often not invited to join their male peers after work. (Perhaps less surprising in the era of #MeToo than before.)

Given this scenario, how do women move their careers forward effectively and with relative grace? The word “grace” is, in my opinion, key. And I would also add that grace is equally important for men.

On to the four tips, though.

Wensil and Heath recommend that you leverage informal norms. That is, know how your company culture operates and act accordingly. For example, if your company isn’t big on calendared get-togethers, try bumping into (my term) the executive VP of your division in the line at Starbuck’s before heading into work. Try putting your skills at observation to work. At the next staff meeting, see who hangs out with whom. Even if you aren’t a part of that group, it’s helpful to know who’s connected and what they’re saying to each other. The authors also recommend tuning into what potential connections are saying on the social media.

Many women work a “second shift” and have very little time to spare, so they need to make meaningless time more meaningful. Wensil and Heath recommend arriving at meetings five minutes early and talking to the others who show up early or even arriving early at work every morning and chatting with those you meet as you walk around the building. This is a great way to find out what’s going on. I add that you’re catching people early in the day when they may be more in a mood to confide than later. The authors’ point? Use your time wisely make connections.

Network in a way that’s comfortable. Don’t force yourself to learn a skill, such as golf, if it bores you silly or makes you antsy. Figure out what you like and invite some of your colleagues along just to have a good time. (For more formal company events, the authors counsel introverts to team up with a co-worker and work the room in pairs. It’s always good to have a wing man or woman.)

Don’t hide, or as they put it, face forward. Put your phone in your purse if you carry one or your pocket if you don’t, and engage with others wherever you may be. “Simply being fully present will help you make many more crucial connections.”

I live in the start-up capital of northern Silicon Valley—San Mateo—and often walk downtown from my office around lunch time. Interesting observation: tons of men are out on the streets, all chatting each other up. Happily, I see quite a few young women in their number, and I wonder what they would have to say about how their careers are going.

rawpixel / 123RF Stock Photo

 

Discussing how to work with cultural differences may seem unnecessary for those who live in California or other large metro areas throughout the country. And yet, even people who live in big cities that are havens of cultural diversity or who travel globally may stumble when encountering different aspects of other cultures. (I think of my own experience arriving in the Bay Area 27 years ago. Northern California, at that point, was not just a different culture, it was another planet. To some degree, it remains so for me.)

Professor Art Markman of the University of Texas at Austin offers three useful tips for working cross culturally, backed up by some interesting information. Here they are.

Learn

If you’re going to a specific country or region, it’s well worth it to do some research. With Google so handy, you hardly have an excuse not to. Of course, if you have a co-worker from the country you’re going to, ask questions. If they’re not insanely busy, and even if they are, they will be happy to tell you about their homeland. Just don’t ask snarky/ignorant questions. Example: I went to graduate school with a woman from West Virginia who said that someone had once asked her if her home had a flush toilet. Yes, I know West Virginia is not a “foreign” country, but I’m guessing you take my point.

Professor Markman also notes that some cultures—such as the U.S.—are individualist, while some—East Asia for example—are collectivist. The U.S. tends to be flat, and Japan is hierarchical, which means that everyone’s relative status determines how they interact.

Listen

Dr. Markman calls the brain a “prediction engine, ” always churning out ideas about what will happen in the future. He suggests paying “careful attention to the failures of your predictions.” Further, he notes “One thing that gets in the way of listening is that you may not give people an opportunity to create an expectation failure.” What this means is that you may not give people the opportunity to take actions that are different from what you predict they will do. His example involves asking an audience if there are any questions, when audience members are not comfortable asking questions in public. He recommend breaking through that barrier by saying something that reassures them that it is ok to ask questions and does not give them the option to say nothing.

He also notes that language differences can disguise prediction failures, so it’s a good idea to assign someone to write up and distribute a summary of high points of the meeting. (Not exhaustive minutes.)

Ask

Dr. Markman points out that it’s difficult to know what someone wants, a problem that is compounded when you’re working with someone from another culture. His solution, which is breathtakingly simple, is to ask. (After you have paved the way with reassurances and perhaps found an ally in the group who can let you know if you have elicited a different reaction than the one you intended.)

Actually, when you think about it, these suggestions are probably pretty helpful even if you’re not dealing with obvious cultural differences. Think about it. If you’ve been doing business in New York, a trip to the South may be confounding. These friendly folks seem to have all the time in the world to “visit” with you and yet, you may never see that left hook until it lands. We all carry our own inner cultures—introvert vs. extrovert, for example— with us, and these cultures can make it more difficult to work together and communicate well.

Comment on this post, if you will, and let me know about the cultural difference you’ve encountered, the issues they’ve created, and how you’ve dealt with them.

alexutemov / 123RF Stock Photo

 

 

Many—perhaps most—of us don’t know exactly how to ask for help when we’re overworked. At least at our jobs. We may be afraid of being perceived as incompetent in general or perhaps not up to a specific task. But the fact is that most of us are deluged with work, and the tasks keep on piling on. If we also believe in work-life balance, then the problem feels more crushing.

Social psychologist Heidi Grant of Columbia University’s Motivation Science Center and author of Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help You has studied this and in a recent Harvard Business Review article offers excellent suggestions for getting the help you need.

But before you do anything else, it’s important to realize that you (and your colleagues) may not be “asking for the support you actually need, and if you are, you probably aren’t asking for it in the right way.” Argh.

Here are her suggestions (in my words):

• Home in on what you need. That can take some time, but as Ms. Grant point out, “ … you sometimes have to spend a little time to save a lot of it.” On the other hand, I’m betting that most of us can immediately come up with several tasks we’d like to have taken off our plates without any trouble at all.
• Be really clear when you ask for what you need. This tip calls to mind the line Greta Garbo uttered so memorably in Anna Christie: “Gimme a whiskey, ginger ale on the side, and don’t be stingy, baby.” Pretty unequivocal, eh?
• Accept the help you’re offered. Grant cautions us not to be rigid. The help we ask for may not be what someone is willing or able to offer. we may not want to ask someone who has not responded positively to our requests in the past. People who have refused you before may say yes this time. And, of course, everyone is drowning in work, so your requestee may just plain be unable to help.
• Say thanks. People need to know that they’ve been helpful. It’s a potent motivator to continue to help you in the future.

 

These are really great ideas. And to them I add one that should go without saying—which is to reciprocate. Of course, if your colleague is an unappreciative jerk, you have license to say no, but hey, why not take the high road?

ocusfocus / 123RF Stock Photo