Tom Keefe

Spirited Communication

Author: Tom Keefe (Page 6 of 7)

Bigstock image of businessman presentation

Presenting Results That Tell a Sad Tale About Presentation Skills

March 7, 2013 /

Businessman giving presentation at podiumThis afternoon, I returned to my desk after delivering a speech during an open house organized by my company’s Toastmaster’s club, and spotted an email about presentation skills.

The email was from Distinction Communication Inc., announcing publication of results from Distinction’s 2013 Presentation Impact Survey. Although the survey sample was small (150 people), it provided some data that lends credence to the notion that companies and their employees (including leaders) need help to develop their presentation skills.

Even after decades of experience as a communications professional, I saw the need a few years ago to ramp up my speaking and leadership skills through Toastmasters. The support and guidance provided by Toastmasters and companies such as Distinction is worth the investment of time and money.

Here are results of the Distinction 2013 Presentation Impact Survey. I think they track well with what I see within my company.

1) What best represents your role in the organization?

11% Senior Management
42% Sales or Marketing
17% Training & Development
3% Corporate Communications
5% Operations or Finance
22% Other (Education, mid-level management, directors etc)

2) How would you rank the importance of personal presentation skills on your career and income?

89% Communicating with clarity/directly impacts my career and income (Up 3% from 2012)
10% Presentation skills are helpful but only impact my job somewhat
1% Good presentation skills probably don’t impact my job at all

3) What is the mix of face-to-face presentations vs. web-based presentations you deliver?

33% I only deliver face-to-face presentations.
37% Most of my presentations are face-to-face with a few that are web-based.
16% An even mix of face-to-face and web-based presentations.
14% More than half of my presentations are web-based. *(Doubled from 2012 results)

4) Which best reflects your ability to get honest and constructive feedback on the presentations you deliver?

39% I get regular, constructive and helpful feedback on how well I’m presenting.
36% The feedback I receive is very infrequent and not always helpful.
25% I rarely or never receive direct input on my presentation skills.

5) Do you believe you are a good presenter?

49% Yes, I believe I’m a pretty good presenter
41% I think I’m a somewhat average presenter
10% My presentation skills are not as strong as I would like

6) What best describes the PowerPoint (or equivalent) presentations you or your team deliver? (Be as objective as you can)

12% Very simple- sometimes bordering on too elementary
16% Overly complicated – way too much information on a slide
50% Average visuals- no better or worse than others I see
22% Awesome- high caliber and well-designed presentation visuals

7) Rank these presenter behaviors from most to least irritating or distracting, 1 being the worst (listed below from most irritating average score to least)

#1 – Reading directly from notes or off the screen
#2 – The use of umm’s and uhhh’s (filler words)
#3 – Pacing or nervous movement
#4 – Eyes wander and won’t make eye contact with the audience
#5 – Presenter wants to stay behind a podium or lectern

8) On a 1-10 scale, rank the average presenter you see in your organization every week.

5.6

9) Does your company provide meaningful and ongoing resources and tools to help you become a more effective communicator and presenter?

31% Yes- my company supports the ongoing development of these skills in a number of ways
55% Limited- my company provides only occasional or limited resources or tools
14% No- my company does not offer any resources for presentation skills development

10) When asked to deliver an important presentation, your gut feeling is…

35% No sweat… I really love giving presentations
64% I would be anxious but I always make it work out
1% I’d rather have a root canal at the dentist’s office

11) When it comes to creating the underlying message for my presentations…

37% I don’t have a consistent plan for shaping important presentation messages
8% Someone else usually creates the messages for my presentations
55% I have a very specific messaging game plan that I use

*Survey respondents January 2013= 150

This annual survey is conducted by Distinction Communication Inc., a Portland, OR–based presentation services company that provides delivery skills coaching, messaging and advanced design support to clients around North America and the world.

Repost: If you want us to call, stop using words

February 21, 2013 /

Originally posted to the Commakazi Speek blog on 12-20-2010
With the news that OfficeMax and Office Depot will merge, this might be useful to the new marketing team there.

I used to think that it was clever to convert a telephone number into a word, using the letters on a telephone keypad. “What a great way to make a phone number easy to remember,” I thought back then.

But technology (actual mobile phone design) has changed all that, and companies that use words, rather than numbers, in their advertisements are showing that they are out-of-touch. And that’s exactly the effect that they are having with their device-dependent customers.

It actually is annoying to have to hunt-and-peck on a telephone when all you have to go on is the “secret word.” That’s why I told my church’s marketing team years ago that it was fine to list the phone number for Joy Lutheran Church as 1-847-362-4JOY, but that they should include the final four numbers in parentheses (1-847-362-4569).

What back then was annoying, today is harmful to potential sales and customer satisfaction. That’s because the correlation between letters and numbers on mobile phone keypads is no longer standard.

Here’s an example. I wanted to call OfficeMax regarding its MaxPerks(r) reward program. The only phone number listed in the MaxPerks brochure is 877.OFFICEMAX. The first thing I noticed is that OFFICEMAX is nine letters, and U.S. telephone numbers (minus the area code) are seven digits. So OfficeMax has tacked on two letters that are meaningless–and confusing–to a customer trying to dial.

The adventure continues, depending on the customer’s mobile phone. Here is a keypad similar to the one on my Nokia phone.nokia-phone-keyboard

See how each number 0-9 is assigned to just one letter? That is not the way that old-time landline telephone keypads are designed. But more and more people are opting away from landlines, and using their mobile phones exclusively.

So when I tried to dial 1.877.OFFICEMAX, I experienced this:

◦The letter O–no corresponding number
◦The letter F–the number 4
◦The letter I–no corresponding number
◦The letter C–no corresponding number
◦The letter E–no corresponding number
◦The letter M–the number 0
◦The letter A–no corresponding number
◦The letter X–no corresponding number

Without the actual digits shared in the OfficeMax brochure, I was totally unable to call them. Frustrating! Would that be the case for my Blackberry friends? Oh yes!

blackberry-keyboardHowever, their numbers 0-9 are assigned to different letters than on my Nokia, so the picture is even more muddled. Imagine a Nokia user trying to share a “decoded” number with his colleague using a Blackberry. They’ll never get the number right!

Ok, since so many creative types adore all things Apple, surely the iPhone designers anticipated this issue and made an app for it. Not really:

apple-iphone-keyboardIn fact, I’d say that iPhone users really have no chance, because their phone’s keypad makes no attempt to correlate numbers with letters. Perhaps it’s for the best, right?

If you work in advertising, marketing or sales, point your communicators to this post. It will save your customers much frustration, and prevent you from having a real “hang-up” with customer satisfaction.

Road to Success

Giving Young Communicators a ‘Reality Check’

February 20, 2013 /

bigstock_Road_To_Success_1058994On Thursday, I’ll be part of a panel of communication professionals who will speak to a group of students regarding the “challenges and opportunities of working in corporate communications.”

As I was preparing for the panel discussion, I came across a blog post I wrote three years ago titled, “The Job Market Is Scary…and Scarring.”

Although the market is slowly improving, we haven’t moved very far in three years. So I’m reposting the article because it still rings true to me.

According to Associated Press Economics Writer Jeannine Aversa, the Federal Reserve released a forecast on Wednesday predicting unemployment will stay high over the next two years because recession-scarred Americans are likely to stay cautious.

Coincidently, I had spoken the day before with two separate and distinct groups of job-hunters, which were clearly scared AND scarred by ongoing weak economic conditions and the related highly competitive and frustrating job market.

I’m no stranger to unemployment and a prolonged job search, having been laid off from communications positions in 1991 and 2001. The 2001 layoff was the hardest, coming just three weeks before the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Towers. That attack caused an already struggling economy to tailspin, and hiring froze across the board. I was sitting that morning in a coffee shop with a group of fellow unemployed professionals who had agreed to form a job/networking group. When one of the group members said, “Hey, someone just flew a plane into the World Trade Tower,” I replied, “That’s a shame, but we’ve got to focus on getting a job.” Of course, what I mistakenly perceived to be an accident caused by a poorly skilled pilot turned out to be one of the most significant events of this decade.

It also marked the beginning of a two-and-one-half-year period of under- and unemployment for me. It was a humbling experience, which continues to make me more empathetic with current people who are “in-transition.”

Like the fellow IABC/Chicago members who shared a drink with me after the lunch seminar at Maggiano’s in Chicago. (I took the afternoon as vacation time, and they had time to spend.)

Like the soon-to-graduate Loyola University students who later that evening asked me and three other professionals for advice about a communications career—and whose stiff expressions and carefully chosen words revealed their unspoken, deepest question: “Do we really have a CHANCE to get a decent job?”

At times like this, job seekers need to be heard. It sucks to finally get an interview after weeks of no nibbles, only to be discarded because someone else matches your work experience, AND has something else that the hiring manager preferred. When you are in mid- or late-career, your spouse doesn’t want to hear it. He or she wants to hear that you got the job, along with the salary and benefits that you’ve struggled without for so long.

When you are about to graduate, your parents and friends don’t want to hear that you don’t have any prospects. They want to hear that you have landed a terrific position that will allow you to move out on your own and pay back your student loans.

No, in this scary job market that scars more than it soothes, people need to have someone who has an open ear.

Someone who has been there…and knows that he might be there again one day.

Can't see what's wrong

Most of us understand remorse; too few of us understand consequences

February 19, 2013 /

bigstock_The_See_No_Evil_we-200x300If you are an elected official, a spokesperson for a not-for-profit organization, or a leader within a corporation, you may be faced one day with the need to address wrong-doing within your organization.

At that time, the first words that crisis communications consultants may suggest that you utter are a version of “We’re sorry.”

When shaping your responses, it will be critical to consider the public’s perspective. They will want to hear you express genuine remorse, and they will want you to understand that the wrong-doing may come with consequences that you do not necessarily want, but that you accept.

Here is what I wrote on my former blog in September 2011 when Democratic New York Representative Anthony Weiner finally came clean over his inappropriate texting:

Democratic New York Representative Anthony Weiner is the latest person to exhibit a condition that afflicts more people than anyone would care to admit.

The condition is remorse over one’s behavior and decisions—without a corresponding acceptance that behavior and decisions carry consequences.

This condition is evident in children who, when caught doing something such as lying, stealing, cheating, or hurting another human being, demonstrate remorse—typically with tears and cries of, “I’m s-sorry!” They’re looking for a way out of the situation, but don’t consider that they might have to face consequences of their behavior and decisions. They don’t want a time-out, or spanking, or to ask forgiveness of the person from whom they stole, to whom they lied, or whom they hurt. Their immediate, typical response when told about consequences? “But I SAID I was SORRY!”

Weiner isn’t a child, but he isn’t much of an adult, either. An adult assumes responsibility for his or her actions and decisions, and when it’s clear that an apology, or restitution, or a change is necessary because of those actions and decisions, an adult makes good. A child thinks of how to save face, or “get out of trouble.” An adult thinks of others; a child thinks of himself or herself.

It isn’t just politicians who suffer from this condition. In the wake of the economic meltdown of recent years, while financial services firms were doling out huge bonuses to their executives and employees, the public screamed. How many of those executives and employees, many of whom expressed some form of remorse in public comments, stepped up to accept consequences of their decisions and actions which flamed the meltdown? I believe the answer is: none.

I have two close acquaintances who separately ended up being divorced because of marital indiscretions on their part. My church lost a pastor who, as it turned out, years before in a different congregation, had an affair with a church member and kept it hidden until the church member’s husband uncovered evidence of the affair and confronted them both.

In all of those cases, the original bad decision/action didn’t have to cause the death of a marriage or pastoral ministry. But the offender would have had to see the wrong, admit to it, and then agree to whatever consequences that the offended party would see as a way to restore the relationship. To my knowledge, that never occurred in any of the above situations.

Representative Weiner’s forceful refusal to consider resignation indicates to me that he doesn’t think that his decisions and actions require him to face consequences. Sadly, his innocent wife has been subjected to media hounding as people wonder why she hasn’t either stood by her husband’s side, or left him. She is reaping consequences of Weiner’s acts. Why can’t he see that?

Finally, I don’t know that I’m seeing more of this condition in the work world, but I certainly see daily evidence that people think a simple, “I’m sorry” should excuse their every decision and action—without consideration of how those decisions and actions have impacted the people around them. These people don’t seem to think that they might have consequences that are a natural outcome of those decisions and actions.

Someone might say that these people just don’t think. I disagree. They think a lot…but not about consequences.

I’m Getting Comfortable With the Blackberry Playbook

February 19, 2013 /

blackberry-playbook-OS2-img-1As I recently updated the operating system on my Blackberry Playbook, I reflected on how I’ve made peace with the tablet. I’d say that peace came from lowering my expectations.

For the background on my love/hate relationship with the Playbook, read this post on my former blog.

I’ve since updated to the latest release of the Playbook OS (2.1.0.1526 as of this post), and the glitch that kept me from reading emails sent to my Blackberry phone has been resolved. I also can log into my work’s wifi network after getting a tip about disabling bluetooth prior to logging in. (I restart bluetooth after logging in, to link the tablet with my phone.)

The tablet’s poorly designed onscreen keyboard still frustrates me as I have to toggle between letters and numbers on separate screens. I also dislike being unable to sort images by date, meaning that whenever I want to view a recent photo, I have to spin down screen after screen of saved photos to get to the recent ones.

The tablet’s larger screen is better than the phone when I need to use the calendar or lookup a contact. The browser is quick, but it can’t handle certain sites like Hootsuite. For example, I have several columns set up for direct messages and search terms like #iabc12. I can’t move across the screen cleanly to see columns to the right of the current view. Hard to explain, but maybe I’ll make a video and post it.

Still, I use the Playbook every day. It has become useful enough that I forgive its faults…for now.

Cowboy bites the dust

Another Sober Celebrity Bites the Dust

February 18, 2013 /

bigstock-Another-Cowboy-Bit

GQ: Are you sober these days?
Bruce Willis: I had been sober [for a while]. But once I realized that I wasn’t gonna run myself off the pier of life with alcohol, drinking vodka out of the bottle every day… I have wine now, mostly when I eat.

With the recent news that actor Bruce Willis has decided that two decades of sobriety was enough, and that he now can handle wine with meals, I thought about a post I wrote about putting people on pedastals. The point that can help you in your communications is that your decisions affect your “public brand,” and you usually will benefit by having someone to act as a filter/gatekeeper/trusted advisor when you are planning to publish anything that might be sensitive or open to criticism.

In the case of Bruce Willis, online articles that detailed his deliberate decision to end his sobriety—and then tell the world through GQ—resulted in a flood of comments from recovering alcoholics, who felt that Willis was sadly delusional if he believed that an alcoholic could successfully drink again.

Here’s what I wrote in a post on my Commakazi Speek blog, titled, “We tend to fall off of pedestals and soap boxes.” Just add Bruce’s name to the list!

I don’t know whether Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana), Tom Cruise or the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. are familiar with any 12-Step Program, but they could benefit from some helpful guidance offered by those programs.

Most of the well-known 12-Step Programs (e.g., Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous) operate under a set of principles known as the Twelve Traditions. Number 11 states, “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.” Number 12 states, “Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.”

My friends who taught me about 12-Step Programs said Traditions 11 and 12 protect both the individual and the 12-Step Program as a whole. They protect the individual because they discourage a member of the program from being “put on a pedestal” and becoming known as an “expert” on addictions or compulsive behavior in the media. That media spotlight could bring pressure that might, in combination with a failure to “work the program,” prove detrimental to the member. The traditions protect the 12-Step Program because it won’t be linked in the public’s mind with the failure of any individual member.

Take an example of a celebrity who goes on a media tour, stating that he or she is an alcoholic, but has stopped drinking thanks to Alcoholics Anonymous. If that celebrity later drinks, and that is reported in the media, some other active alcoholic might say, “I guess that A.A. Program doesn’t work.” Regardless of the fact that millions of people have successfully found and maintained sobriety through the A.A. Program, this person sees the failure of one famous person as representing the effectiveness of an entire program.

When 15-year-old Miley professes her Christianity–then agrees to be photographed in a sexually-tinged pose, she falls off the pedestal. When Rev. Wright engages in a clash of religion, politics and race, he stumbles from his soap box. When Tom Cruise appears irrational, then attacks someone for trying to retain rationality, he slides off of the pedestal and upsets the soap box.

No one is perfect, of course. None of us on a bad day would want to be held up to the media spotlight. When circumstances or good fortune, or old-fashioned hard work culminate in media attention, those 12-Step Traditions can be helpful in maintaining our perspective, and the reputation of the organizations or movements we hold dear.

Woman angry at phone

Your Privacy Might Take Another Hit, Thanks to “Nomi”

February 18, 2013 /

Woman angry at phoneDo you want your mobile phone to be used to track your presence in a store, how long you stay, where you browse and what displays make you linger—all without your prior knowledge or approval?

That already is happening in merchant locations served by retail-tracking startup Nomi, according to Advertising Age (online registration may be necessary to view). The system currently is tracking such information at stores in New York City.

My concern as a private citizen is that Nomi (“Know Me”–yikes!) has little, if any, notification on consumers’ phones that the tracking is occurring, and consumers are automatically “opted in” to being tracked, according to AdAge.

Until Nomi moves to a system that would provide deals or some other tangible benefit in exchange for the consumers’ opt-in approval–and refrains from automatic opt-in, we have one option to protect our privacy. Click the “Opt Out” option in the footer of the Nomi site and enter your phone’s MAC address to be removed from Nomi’s database.

Don’t know your phone’s MAC address? The opt out link provides other links for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows  7 phones, detailing how to locate your MAC address.

As marketers focus on gathering data on the shopping, viewing and buying habits of consumers, these kind of intrusions into our privacy will continue to creep up. Technology developers like Nomi certainly don’t “know me” if they think I will blindly accept it.

What do you think?

Spirited Communications

Spirited Communications Ahead!

February 3, 2013 /

Spirited CommunicationsWebster’s online dictionary defines “spirited” as “full of energy, animation, or courage.” That’s an accurate description of what I hope this new blog delivers and engenders.

We have too many other sites to visit if we simply want to have our eyes and ears tickled. I can spend hours on Facebook, reading and responding to the random thoughts and experiences of friends, relatives and people who, at some earlier time, I mistakenly relented from unfriending.

YouTube and video sites like it have become mini-entertainment channels. For every serious and thought-provoking video, we can see dozens of time-wasters.

I hope to help shape this blog into something more. Something worth investing your time into as a reader, commenter and/or contributor. The primary focus will be on topics related to communications professionals—after all, I’ve been in that profession for more than 30 years.

Anyone who recalls my earlier blog, “Commakazi Speek,” can be sure that its spirit survives here. Over time, I will bring some of those posts here, if they serve this site’s purpose.

After all, what spirited communications doesn’t benefit from the occasional “harsh realities, bitter truths, and other reasons to smile”?

Finally…A Young Whipper-snapper Teaches Me Something About Gen Y

May 9, 2009 /

I’ve attended many conference sessions and training courses during the past few years that tried to explain the significance of generational differences in the workplace, and why Baby Boomers like me were going to have to adjust our thinking and actions as “Gen Yers” begin to work alongside us.

The topic has become so overworked, in my opinion, that last September, I nearly skipped the Keynote Session at the Melcrum Strategic Communication Management Summit in Chicago. All I saw was its title: “Unlocking Gen Y’s Loyalty, Creativity, and Performance.” “Not again,” I thought. After all, I had just participated in a training course at work on the topic of generations in the workforce, and the presenters at a pre-conference workshop at the 2008 Melcrum “Summit” event in Chicago had included the same discussion as part of their session.

What else could I possibly learn?

It turned out that I could learn a lot, and am very glad that I decided to stay at the Keynote Session. The speaker was Jason Ryan Dorsey, author of books including “Graduate to Your Perfect Job” and “My Reality Check Bounced.” Dorsey is funny, well-spoken and in-touch with the latest generation to enter the workforce because he is a member of Gen Y. In fact, I learned a couple of things about Gen Y that I want to share with you, and you can learn more by visiting Jason’s website.

First, don’t believe anyone who tells you that you can instantly tell everything about a group of employees simply based on their birth dates. That’s too much like Horoscopes, and most of us know to keep a skeptical eye on something that is generalized to such an extreme.

Jason will tell you that. He pointed out to the Melcrum Summit audience how Gen Yers are said to be technically savvy–after all, they were handed laptops right after their first pacifiers, and latched onto text messaging long before they completed DARE training in middle school. Yet, the reality is that someone who knows how to operate a device such as a mobile phone and its texting option is not necessarily a technical savant.

“Usually on the first day of a new job, some Baby Boomer comes up to us and says that he couldn’t figure out how to hook up the PC to the printer, but he figured that we would know how to do it,” Dorsey said. “Well, we have no clue, but we can look at the pictures in the user manual and try to figure it out.”

Another generalization about Gen Y that Dorsey discussed was the lenth of time they are willing to wait until deciding to leave a particular job. Whereas the World War II generation expected to be at the same job for an entire career, and Baby Boomers typically gave a new job 1-2 years before deciding to move on, “Gen Yers know by lunch whether we’re going to come back the next day,” Dorsey said.

Well, I’ve hired and worked with people from a range of generations who held that same attitude. And a little thing we call the “economic meltdown” probably has skewed that job-hopping statistic a bit.

Age isn’t the only measuring stick, and it isn’t one of the more reliable, in my opinion.

Sensitive Information? Scratch THIS!

May 8, 2009 /

I’m beginning to think that the recent “stress test” applied to U.S. financial institutions has stressed at least one of the institutions to the cracking point: Citibank.

How else can we explain the financial institution’s decision to intentionally hinder its customers from paying credit card bills?

Here’s the background: I use a corporate card provided by my employer for business-related expenses. It happens to be a Citibank Visa card.

When I received the corporate card some years ago, it included the URL of Citibank’s corporate customer service website. I typically access the site at work, and have the URL saved there in my browser favorites.

Today, on my mental health vacation day, MY stress level went up when I tried to pay my corporate card bill from home. I didn’t have the URL saved in my home browser favorites. “No problem,” I naively thought. “I’ll just get it off of the credit card.”

But I quickly realized that the current corporate card that I’m carrying has a customer service telephone number, but no website URL. “Weird, but I’ll just get it off of the Citibank statement,” I optimistically opined.

You guessed it: No website URL of any kind on the statement. Just line after tiny line of legal blather regarding what do if the credit card is lost, stolen, or embroiled in a billing dispute with a merchant. But if you want to actually pay Citibank on-time and conveniently through a website? Forget it!

Well, if you are a regular reader, you know that I didn’t forget it. I called the customer service telephone number, and after teasing the website URL from the friendly sounding phone representative, I asked the “elephant in the room” question as sweetly as I could.

“I was wondering…wouldn’t it be a good idea to print this URL on your credit card and statement so that customers like me could more easily pay our bill?”

“We don’t publish that information,” the representative replied in a tone that instantly turned from friendly to very guarded. “Why not?” I asked, not yet convinced that this was a problem…until she replied.

“That’s sensitive information,” the representative said, trying to sound shocked that I would even suggest such an absurd idea. “In fact, we can’t publish that information because the websites are going to be changing.”

“Umm…if you’re going to be changing the website addresses, how are customers like me going to be able to find the site to make payments?”

At that moment, the representative must have remembered that these calls can be monitored for training purposes, and she definitely was in need of training. “I wasn’t supposed to say that,” she said, quoting Hagrid from one of the Harry Potter novels. “Scratch that.”

Hmm…a financial institution that is struggling with unsecured debt from its credit card customers has made the decision to make it extremely difficult for those customers to make an online payment. Then, it apparently is embarking on a secret plan to change its online banking URLS without notifying its customers. And the response of its customer service representative is, “Scratch that”?

No Citibank. Scratch THIS!

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