Author: svik88

You can speak. Can you communicate?

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When I was 2 years old, I uttered my first word – apparently ‘ma’. I learnt more complex words quickly – food, chocolates, biryani,etc. Soon, I spoke fairly well and could express what I wanted. While the choice of words might be different, this is the case for most of us. That’s both fortunate and unfortunate. Fortunate because most of us can speak. Unfortunate, because we confuse speaking with communicating.

Speaking is about expressing an idea. It is a one way relationship – much like my high school romance. Communicating goes beyond. It is about forming the bridge with the other party. It is about a two way dialogue.

So how can we be a “Public Speaker” and yet communicate?

We think of speeches as a fully prepared script. We rehearse every motion and deliver them. However, a trully powerful communicator can use static scripts only if he trully knows his audience (refer point 1). Instead I propose that you think of your speech as a slightly fluid piece of work and alter it based on what the audience is telling you. There are loads of techniques and loads of things to learn. But let’s get started with three.

Knowing your audience:

This step is to let us predict your audience in advance and plan for it. Start by building the persona of your audience.. Below are some questions that can be used to build the persona.

  • What is the knowledge level of the audience (and their views)
  • What is their physical and mental state (tired because of journey, just had lunch,etc)
  • Why are they here & what do they want from my speech

Now imagine how they would react to the currrent draft of your speech. Better still, deliver the draft to a few people who can represent your target audience. Based on these reactions, modify and fine-tune the speech. In this approach, though the audience is not giving you immediate feedback – you’ve already gotten feedback in advance & fine-tuned the speech to build the bridge quicker.

Gauging the audience:

You are on stage to give the audience the best experience you can. By continuously gauging the audience’s non-verbal cues, you can adjust your speech.

  • They look bored: Maybe thisparticular  segment is not new to them (assuming you are a great entertainer). Skip over this part of the talk and go to the more juicy parts.
  • They look lost: maybe you were not supposed to speak now? Open the floor up to questions and you’ll understand why they feel confused. Then get the confusion sorted.
  • It looks like they disagree: If it is a lot of people disagreeing, you need to do something about it. A question like – “you look concerned, how can I help” may help. But do this early, not at the end of your presentation.
  • They are shivering or reaching for jackets : Simple way to win the audience – ask for the air con to be reduced. They will listen to you after that.

We can go on… ask the editor to make me write more J

Influencing your Audience:

While material on this subject is worthy of a few books, let me illustrate with an (over simplified) example. Imagine a teacher at a boarding school trying to get her students to go shower.

  • Format 1: Go shower now.
  • Format 2: Can you go shower?
  • Format 3: Would you like to shower now or in 30 mins?

Format 1 works if the teacher has the power, but might lose respect. Ask my parents about the success rate of Format 2. However, Format 3 works wonders as it allows the children to decide that they will shower.

With such subtle changes(when not used for sly things), a communicator can gain acceptance from the audience and by the end of the speech – build a very strong bridge.

Delivering a message is step one, but when your audience accepts your message and feels like they connected with you – then you’ve graduated from speaking to communicating.

The true difference betweena speaker and communicator is exposed when they are put in front of an opinionated audience. A good speaker will express his or her views very articulately, but not many opposers will change their initial views. A good communicator can build a bridge with the audience and convince the audience of his or her views. Which one are you?

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Published a part of Toastmasters District 98 newsletter – http://issuu.com/d98newsletter/docs/communicate98_nov15

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Allergic to Bullets

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Jerry is a manager of a restaurant. He is always in a good mood. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would always reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”Many of the waiters at his restaurant used to quit their jobs when Jerry changed jobs, so that they could follow him around from restaurant to restaurant.
Why?

Because Jerry was a natural motivator.

If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was always there, telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation.
Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! No one can be a positive person all the time. How do you do it?”
Jerry replied,

“Each morning I wake up and say to myself, I have two choices today. I can choose to be in a good mood or I can choose to be in a bad mood. I always choose to be in a good mood.

Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be victim or I can choose to learn from it. I always choose to learn from it.

Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I always choose the positive side of life.”
“But it’s not always that easy,” I protested.
“Yes, it is.” Jerry said.

“Life is all about choices.When you cut away all the junk, every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations.You choose how people will affect your mood.You choose to be in a good mood or a bad mood.It’s your choice how you live your life.”

Several years later, I heard that Jerry did something that you are never expected to do in a restaurant business. He left the back door of his restaurant open. And then?

In the morning, he was robbed by three armed men. They forced Jerry to open the safe box. While Jerry was trying to open it, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped of the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him.

Luckily, Jerry was found quickly and rushed to the hospital.After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body! I saw Jerry about six months after the accident.

When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I would be twins! Want to see my scars?”
I declined to see his wounds but did ask him what was going through his mind as the robbery took place.

“The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied.

“Then after they shot me, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or I could choose to die. I chose to live.”
“Weren’t you scared?” I asked.
Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me that I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the emergency room and I saw the expressions on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read ‘He’s a dead man.’ And I knew I needed to take action.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
“Well, there was a big nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry. “She asked me if I was allergic to anything. ‘Yes,’ I replied. The doctors and nurses stopped working as they waited for my reply. I took a deep breath and yelled, ‘Bullets!’ Over their laughter, I told them, ‘I’m choosing to live. Please operate on me as if I’m alive, and not dead’.”
Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude.

I learned from him that:

Everyday you have a choice to either enjoy your day or to hate it.

The only thing that is truly yours- that no one can control or take from you- is your attitude. So if you can take care of that, everything in life becomes much easier.

Learning to ride a cycle

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Here are the instructions:

  1. Stand perpendicular to the cycle, with the handlebar side of the cycle ahead of you. Put a leg across the cycle such that the cycle is now between your legs
  2. Get yourself seated on the cycle seat, leave one foot on the floor and another on a pedal. Press the foot on the pedal down clockwise and the cycle will start to move forward. As the cycle starts moving, the other foot should also be placed on the other pedal.
  3. Keep pedalling with both feet. The cycle will move forward based on the force you apply on the pedals.

Congratulations you have now learnt to ride a cycle. Believed me? No?

Then why look for tips, tricks and techniques to change your life overnight. Go get your hands dirty, fall down a few times and keep fine tuning your approach – that’s the way you learn.

The First Principles

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When Elon Musk  and his team were trying to estimate how much the first SpaceX rockets would cost, they could have just looked at the products on the market. Instead, they figured out what the necessary parts of a rocket are and then found out how much the raw materials of those parts would cost. The result was startling – SpaceX could build a rocket for about 2% of the typical price.

Elon Musk’s approach to solving problems is to always start with the first principles. He says that often we go with analogies  – “They did it this way OR nobody has done it yet”. But with first principles, he boils it down to fundamentals – the first principles. What are the physics of it? How much time with it take? How much will it cost? Why will it not be possible?

Ashlee Vance mentions how Musk wanted to revamp the very idea of the automobile and build an energy network at the same time with a budget equivalent to what Ford and ExxonMobil spend on their annual holiday parties. Or how similarly SpaceX created avionics parts at the cost of the food at meetings about the cost of avionics parts at traditional firms. Similar stories were shared by Sergey Brin & Larry Page when they first started with Google and people said it was impossible, but they worked out the numbers and figured it could be done. As Larry Page quotes “Good Ideas are always crazy until they are not”. 

When you start with a large task or challenge – conventional wisdom usually answers that it is not possible to solve such a challenge. However, if you were to work out the basics and the numbers underlying the challenge – it is often doable. Next time you hear something like “Thats how it is” – try switching to first principles.

Focus on the process and the journey

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At the recent Toastmasters meeting, I informed people about Stephen Covey’s P/PC balance (Production and Production capability). Covey explains how a company that only worries about production and doesn’t think of machine downtime will soon lose out to the other which plans its PC- production capability with downtime, machine repairs, research, upgrade etc. Similarly, I requested people to concentrate on what they were doing with their own production capability rather than just the results – so sleep habits, eating & exercise, building teams, learning new skills, etc. Focus on the process of self-improvement rather than just the results.

The Toastmaster of the Day (Sid) had a couple of lovely messages with “Movies” as the theme. Interestingly, I felt they applied to this overarching theme of the process. He opened with a story about his granduncle explaining the time and effort it took to create a movie. He showed him the many takes, the edits and all the effort that went into creating one clip in a movie. All this effort is always hidden and we only see the movie. But such is life. You may have to put in days or months of effort and that would yield one moment to present yourself. Like they say, it takes 10 years to become an overnight success.

Sid’s conclusion was equally apt. He said a good movie plot should not be judged on the twists and the climax, but instead on how the movie progresses between those points. Life is similar to that, we long for and sometimes dwell inside some key moments. But the real action happens between those points in your life. The points are just photographs, the movie is between them.

Treating all like Family

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Let’s face it – the world is filled with idiots. Some argue that there are more idiots than the world population (I call you both idiots, you both call me an idiot and you call each other idiots. So we have 6 idiots but only 3 people. Idiotic Math). Some argue that if you meet idiots all day – you are the idiot. And the science around idiots is quite intriguing, but I am experimenting with dealing with the idiot (myself or the other person – doesn’t matter at this point).

To catch yourself from getting angry the next time, try to treat the other person as a relative. That cute grandpa who forgets everything or the far away uncle who doesn’t understand anything you said or the grumpy old uncle who just doesn’t agree with anything you say. You are not allowed to shout at any of them – so what do you do instead?  Shower some love and hope for the best 🙂

Toastmasters Opening Addresses

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At the Toastmasters club in office, I’ve been giving opening addresses at the weekly meetings. I promised some colleagues that I’d start keeping a record of these,so to catch up here are the last 5.

Complaining:

When was the last time you complained about something? OK- what did you complain about yesterday? (Someone said computers). Great. When did you last say something good about your computer? (the audience didn’t have much to say).

I recently listened to Mahatria talk about a similar case. He said, when something bad happens we complain and tell many people. But when something good happens, we dont talk about it much. His challenge was for us to not talk about the bad with anybody and also talk about the good to atleast 5 people.

So if you didn’t find today’s meeting useful, please don’t tell anyone. But if you enjoyed yourself, liked the positive environment and thought you would learn something – go tell other people.

How heavy is the glass of water?

How heavy is a glass of water? ( answers started with depends to glass specifics and settled on a few grams). Great. So how hard is it to hold that glass of water? (not very). Ok how about holding it for a minute? (ok can do) How about an hour? (my hands may pain)

Well thats the point – don’t hold too many things in your head. If you need to discuss them, please do. Don’t keep them stuck in your head, you’ll feel much better if you just discussed them. It’s ok to ask for help and if you need a pair of ears to listen- you know where to find me. Have a lovely weekend!

Rakshabandhan

The Barclays Singapore Toastmasters Club hosted its humorous and evaluation contest yesterday. After the contest I received a flood of whatsapp messages about what happened and how it compared to previous year contests. I felt like I was there and I felt happy for everyone. That’s also when I realised that they all reached out to tell me about it and helped me feel like I was still a part of that club. It meant that actually, they were behaving more like a family and less like just a club. I realised that I was part of the family.

Given tomorrow is Rakshabandhan tomorrow – we should aim to build a family here too, a community of brothers and sisters who will help each other grow. I don’t know how we can get there, but I know that families always have something to eat. So as a first step, I’ve brought chocolates for all of us. I will place it in the Members’ corner and hope we can share some food each week. Here’s to the Barclays Pune Toastmasters family. Happy Rakshabandhan.

The underdog

Have you heard of underdogs? Who are they? (some answers). Ya I guess its like Kenya in a cricket match. The beauty of underdogs is that we love them and want them to succeed. Yatharth wrote about underdogs recently and posed an important question. He asks if you back the ultimate underdog – yourself? Did you back yourself? Did you give yourself a chance?

I know many of you have come here to develop your communication skills. Don’t wait. You can be a better version of yourself. All it takes is for you to give yourself a chance- to use this platform, to start speaking and to start growing. Please let me know how I can help you. Wishing you the best.

STAR and Deliberate Practice 

This opening address was a 15 minute segment – behaving as a combination of an educational segment and an opening address. There were 2 main components:

  1. People wrote stories and we analysed the stories with the STAR framework, checked if stories can be improved and discussed how such frameworks make it easier for us to communicate:
    • S – Setting – What is the backdrop? (Crow was thirsty)
    • T – Target – What was the protagonist looking to achieve? (Crow wanted to drink the water in the bottom of a pot)
    • A – Action – What did the protagonist do? (Crow dropped stones)
    • R – Result – What happened? (Crow drank water)
  2. The biggest stars built their skills on deliberate practice. Deliberate practice is best described using the routines sportsmen use – they practice a particular routine over and over again  as opposed to gameplay. Yet at work, we are only engaged in gameplay – never consciously practicing skills. One way to do the latter is to use specific frameworks and analyse ourselves. So you can use the STAR framework to see if you are communicating effectively at work. In crunch situations another useful framework is the “Situation-Complication-Response” model. Ex: “The application has broken down, there is nobody in the office to fix it and so I will do XYZ”

So become conscious about what you say and be deliberate. Look for ways to improve it and your communication will also improve tremendously. Use things like the STAR framework, and start communicating like a STAR. Good luck.