The Spring Extraordinary Team newsletter has just hit the streets!  Updated format (no longer a html – we have gone back to pdf, and you can access it in full color or grayscale/black & white.

This quarter, we have featured:

• Team Manifesto
• Management as a Calling
• May 9^th Webinar on the 5 Secrets Every Team Leader Can Do to Get the Most Out of Their Meeetings
• Practical Team Activities: Simple Starter Questions?
• From the Bookshelf:  Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life
• What Were You Thinking?
• Quote of the Quarter: Harold Geneen
• What’s New at QPC Inc.

Enjoy the newsletter and feel free to forward it on to your team mates – and don’t forget to sign up for the complimentary webinar on May 9^th about how to get the most out of your team meetings.

Initially, I was a little caught off guard.  Really?  A woman who snorts?  Thankful that she had provided some kind of disclaimer, her speech was well crafted and kept me engaged with stories, examples, and activities that demonstrated key concepts from her book, I Love You More Than My Dog: Five Decisions That Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad.  So an occasional snort here and there just made me giggle (on the inside).

A few days ago, a coaching client asked me about vocalized pauses (ums, likes, you know) and whether I could teach people to stop saying them.  My answer?  Yes, people can be taught to minimize vocalized pauses, but usually there are bigger fish to fry in the coaching relationship – unless those ticks are really annoying.

Which made me think of Jeanne.  Were her snorts a vocalization that needed to be minimized?  Or were they uniquely different to Jeanne?  The fact that I have thought about her presentation and talked about it to at least five people in the last week makes me think otherwise.  Her snorts are sticky.  They are unusual and therefore memorable.

Whatever makes you unique, don’t try to hide it because no one else does that…or that’s not what “good” presenters do.  Be yourself when giving a presentation.  Show your passion.  Be genuine and authentic.  Be YOU.  You and your presentation will be much more memorable.

The other speaker said a similar profane word which escalated into a crescendo of f-bombs.

I am not a prude and I have been known to utter a few profane words onstage myself.   But is all that profanity really necessary? From my perspective, I think it depends on three factors:

1. Location.  If you give a presentation in a conservative church, even mild profanity would not be appropriate.  However, if you give a speech at a evening comedy club, then chances are it would be.  Although, I think some comics use profanity just to get a laugh whereas it takes real work to make comedy work without resorting to throw-away cuss words.
2. Style.  If you normally swear like a sailor (I can say that because I used to be one!), then it might be appropriate to be completely authentic to who you are and the message that you are bring to the audience.  Gary Vanyerchuck is renowned for his intensely profane style because that is who he is on and off the stage.  It works for him because he is expressive and passionate about his message.
3. Audience.  Just because you like to flip the f-bomb occasionally doesn’t mean you should.  Gauge your audience for their cultural capacity.  For example, audiences in the United States are much more puritanical than our Canadian neighbors.  Some company cultures use profanity on a routine basis whereas others might actually have a formal policy that prohibits the use of profanity.  You should be able to see and feel the audience’s reaction to your words – and then determine if you want to continue.

Before you use profanity on the platform, I suggest you take a moment to research your audience and the location.  If it contributes to the content of your message and won’t get in the way of your audiences being able to hear your message, well then, I say be true to your style and go for it!  That being said, when in doubt, leave it out.  Why take the risk of alienating your audience when the whole point of giving your speech is to inspire them to take action?

You can also take a hint from Gary V, who says in his speaker bio: “Please note, Gary frequently utilizes colorful language in his presentations. However, he is aware that this is not appropriate for all audiences and is more than capable of cleaning up his act upon request.”  Love this approach!

What are your thoughts about using profanity on the platform?

I thought this was a really cool idea and so it simmered on the shelf for a while.  I took a look at some other examples and decided to put together my own teamwork manifesto of simple ideas and ground rules for extraordinary team work.

Hope you like it!

It all started when I was in the US Coast Guard as the Training Manager for the Mid-Atlantic region in 1990.  The Coast Guard started doing “TQM” – Total Quality Management – and needed to train up the first set of facilitators.  They looked at the facilitator job description and said, “that seems a lot like how Kristin operates” and so they sent me to two weeks of training.  Unfortunately, it was to teach us how to teach others in TQM principles and tools.

When I got assigned to my very first team, I made just about every mistake one could!  I kid you not: 26 one-hour long meetings.  I don’t even remember what the problem was, nor the solution (we did, in fact, reach a decent, benign solution).  I just remember being soooo frustrated.  None of us knew what we were doing.  We were just trying to get some of these quality management principles off the ground.

Frustrated, I avidly researched this nascent skill called “facilitation” and found myself training a cadre of internal facilitators within the Coast Guard.  By the end of 1992, companies were asking me to teach their people how to facilitate and lead teams! In fact, I still use the core of that initial facilitation skills training program in my company today!

At that point, I decided to pursue the path that I love (facilitation) and move from the active duty Coast Guard to the Reserves in 1993.  I served another 10 years in a reserve capacity (one weekend a month and two weeks a year) and thankfully never got called up for deployment.  (Anyone need a facilitator to secure a Middle Eastern port?).

Good news is that I love what I do.  I work with great people who are dedicated to achieving extraordinary results.  The work is never the same; it is always different.  I learn more about the world as I travel about and work with different business models and areas of interest.  What’s not to like about this business?

Looking back, it has been an interesting ride starting out of the upstairs guest room, taking over the dining room and then the living room.  In 1997, I bought a small bank building that was literally moved down the street into the heart of downtown Hampton.  I renovated the bank into a multimedia learning center with executive office suites.  I’ve grown the business to have four full-time people onboard with several other facilitators on call.  I’ve also “rightsized” the business after I moved up to Washington DC shortly after 9/11.  At this point, I started to hire talent for a performance period vs. hire employees.  Seems to work better for my business model these days. In 2008, I moved out to Scottsdale, AZ where the weather and lifestyle is much more aligned with my personal preferences.

I consider this to be “hump year” actually – a mid-way point to take stock of what I have done and what I intend to do.  That’s what I am doing ALL YEAR – Celebrating success and strategizing for the future.  I’m thinking I’ll be doing another 20 years!

1. Have a meeting just because you “always have a meeting.”
2. Go into the meeting without stated objectives and clearly defined outcome.
3. Put more focus on what the executives want to say than what the audience needs to hear.
4. Overload the schedule wihtout giving participants time to network, process, and just catch their breath.
5. Focus on only one mode of communicating (i.e. a podium parade of talking heads), as opposed to looking at multiple ways to communicate with and engage the audience.
6. Poor coordination and communication between/among speakers, resulting in conflicting messages or unnecessary repetition.
7. Make no provision for building on the meeting’s objectives and goals after the event.
8. Structure the event so that the audience is completely passive, not allowing them to interact and affect the meeting and its content.
9. Not updating the meeting’s structure to reflect changes in the company, the audience, or the culture at large.
10. Not utilizing a production company that understands how to help you design and produce an effective, strategic event and make the most of your investment.

Clearly, events that lack purpose and focus are an incredible waste of time.  When planning your annual meeting, it should align with and further the company’s strategy.  In fact, every single person on the planning team should be able to ask the question: “What’s the point?”  Include them in the strategy and communication planning discussions from the beginning vs. on a “need to know” basis.

Kris Young says, “When working with a focused team like this, creative ideas flow and are on target, and conversations don’t go in circles.  Every idea is clearly focused on one specific goal.  Every decision is aligned to a specific outcome.  Planned messages are clear, and every part of the event is aligned to these messages.  All elements – such as executive presentations, videos, outside speakers, set designs, presentation graphics, the look of the room, even entertainment options – are meant to create an experience that will deliver the company’s intended result.  Working as part of a team like this and producing a truly successful event is incredibly satisfying and fulfilling work.”

Gosh, wouldn’t it be great if all corporate meetings were truly successful, incredibly satisfying and fulfilling?  What would have to happen to make it so?

While I know many folks who start with the PowerPoint, I don’t even think about slides or other visuals until the end – once I have put together my Christmas tree!

Once I know what the topic is, who I am speaking to, and how long I have, I sit down with pen and paper.  There’s something to the physicality of writing down your thoughts that make your ideas come to light.

What do I write down?  Think of the tree trunk as the topic.  From the tree trunk, sprout a few branches which become the key points you will make.  Be careful here!  Figure out what they want to get out of your speech by researching the company, calling a few participants, and talking to your “sponsor” (the person who asked you to give the speech in the first place).  Find out their hopes, fears, and interests.  Take the time to understand the people, their backgrounds, and the collective culture – often called the “personality” of the group – so you can connect your comments with what they care about.

These branches become your subpoints.  You might have an itty bitty little tree for a very short speech, or a massive Rockefeller Center Tree – they all start with the same type of structure: a tree trunk with a few or bunches of branches.  But it doesn’t stop there!  You bring life to the tree with the ornaments you lovingly place on those branches.

What’s an ornament?  It’s anything you use to illuminate and clarify your point.  Engaging, personal stories are always crowd-pleasing favorite.  But don’t stop there!  You can use a definition, quotation, testimonial, examples, illustrations, case studies, comparisons, analogies (like a Christmas Tree!), allusions, facts, and statistics.  Don’t forget to make them relevant and interesting to the audience.

Another type of ornament are those things you do to involve and interact with the audience. Asking one of them (or all of them) to do something, challenging them with a question, creating a demonstration, skit or role play, game, puzzle, or competition.   Especially if you are giving your presentation in the doldrums right after lunch, or they have been sitting for a long period of time, you’ll want to hang some kind of energizing activity on your tree.

Trimming the Christmas Tree is definitely not a once and done activity!  Many of these ornaments will come quickly to mind because you are an expert in the topic and/or you have given some semblance of the speech once or twice before either formally or informally talking to your colleagues.  Others might need some careful introspection, so I’ll carry my notes around with me for a while as the ideas percolate and then simmer.  As the ideas simmer around your core topic, you’ll start refine the structure and flow of the presentation, making it tighter and even more relevant to your audience. You’ll find yourself “speaking” bits and pieces – to yourself while walking or driving or even to your partner and friends as you try out your stories and activities.  I have a dear friend who is also a professional speaker, and he is always trying out new material on me and gauging my reaction to what he said!

At this point, I’m finally ready to sit down with PowerPoint – if I use PowerPoint at all.  A few years ago, I gave a speech and realized there was only ONE slide I absolutely needed to have. It was a 2×2 matrix explaining a specific concept.  Using one slide during the entire speech?  Awkward!  So I got creative and became a “human 2×2 matrix” – while asking the group to write down the elements of the matrix.  Worked beautifully.  But then again, I had to practice how to do this since the audience sees a mirrored reflection of what you would normally do!

Continue to practice your speech, noting where you can condense and combine your thoughts.  Make it supremely relevant for your audience. And while doing so, you’ll be able to prune your tree easily at a moments notice (your time just got cut from 1 hour to 45 minutes – yikes!) and still stay focused and on track.

Build your Christmas Tree based on the topic and what the audience needs to hear rather than letting your slides drive the topic.

Like this posting?  Then register today for my free webinar on June 21, 2012 for more great ideas: Boring to Bravo: Ten Tips to Make Your Presentations Extraordinary.

Flossing is also a good habit to get into to keep your teeth and gums healthy – and it’s an easy habit to fall out of.  Flossing requires a bit more time and energy than brushing your teeth – and you need to have dental floss on hand.  Personally, I go through cycles of good flossing (my dentist would be so proud!) – and some not so great times.  And you can actually feel it (and maybe even see it if you’ve gone for a long time) in your gums.

Lately, I’ve been thinking that social media is the same way.  The last several weeks have been a little crazy, and so my social media outreach efforts have not been so great.  And I can tell.  There isn’t as much engagement with my “tribe” and one of my key metrics (my Klout score) has gone down a few points.

I still can’t confirm a direct correlation between these efforts and incoming business – but I can tell you that I have more inquiries when I am actively blogging and posting, sharing insights, ideas and trends as a thought leader on teamwork, facilitation and professional speaking.

Does one beget the other?  Nope.  For me, one does NOT cause the other the other to happen.  Social media alone does not bring you business and yet it is part of a larger symbiotic relationship.  Give great value to your community, and people will speak highly of you – and refer you – whether it is done face-to-face or virtually.

My current challenge is to floss daily as well as give great value to my community.   I’m up for the challenge – and looking forward to connecting with you!

As I was preparing for this talk, I was wondering the same thing myself as I do not consider myself to be an expert in thought leadership!  Fortunately, I have a keen interest in personal thought leadership and I have facilitated several strategic planning sessions over the last several years where “thought leadership” became a strategic initiative to attract new customers.  To prepare for this speech, I married my personal interest to my experience and viola!  I created a one-hour presentation and slideshow – which was very well received; many executives listed the topic as their primary “take-away”.   High praise indeed.

Yes, the content was valuable.  I shared some insights and a blueprint to take action in an area that many of the executives had not been exposed to.

Yes, I made it very engaging and interactive.  After all, I wrote the book, Boring to Bravo: Proven Presentation Techniques to Engage, Involve, and Inspire Your Audiences to Action.  With a title like that, I have a reputation to live up to!

What really grabbed their attention was the real-life examples from companies that were represented in the room.  As I was explaining key components to a thought leadership strategy, I had copied and pasted an example from a company webpage into the slideshow.  They could SEE themselves  as content curators and thought leaders.  Often times, speakers cite the big players with established case studies (Starbucks, Fedex etc.)  Why not use our own audience’s wisdom?  Sure, it took a bit of work on my part to 1) Get a list of participants and company names; 2) Research the companies and 3) Select a visual that could capture the point.

What do you do to bring in the wisdom of the audience into your presentation?

The conference curator, Chris Williams started JSConf four years ago and decided to throw out all the things he hated about conferences.  He built JSConf centered around 15 and 30 minute presentations about leading edge technologies, best practices, and cool stuff the JS community needs to know.

The content is awesome, the location is hot, and the beer keeps flowing – so what’s not to love about JSConf?  In fact, it has been soooo successful, the conference has been replicated in Europe and is going “down under” in Australia later on this year!

Imagine this: back to back powerpoint presentations about coding…people flowing in and out of the two ballrooms, or hanging out in the lobby hacking their new Boot to Gecko cell phones, happily donated by the folks at Mozilla.  (Why not tap into the brilliance and influence of the JS community to help build the open source infrastructure and apps that people will use? Makes perfect sense to me!)

The presentations that received a standing ovation (there were three standing O’s!) moved well beyond lecture mode.  While each had different styles, they all used relevant stories to illustrate their points, added a little levity and created a connection with the audience.

Visuals are a big part of JSConf with each presenter bringing their laptop to the lectern, plugging it in and starting their presentation.  The screen is in the center of the room with the lectern positioned downstage right, so most of the presenters were confined to talking to the left side of the room!  You know how this drives me crazy…..the screen should be stage right with the presenter able to use the entire riser to connect with the audience.  However, I understand WHY the screen is in the center of the stage.  Have you ever tried to read itty bitty code on a large screen?  Dual screens might have solved this problem…but I digress…..

In keeping with the idea of being on the leading edge, Chris decided to have me speak in the afternoon of the second day.  Talk about doing something different!  For a day and a half, the audience had been bombarded with Powerpoint – and I walked on stage and the screen was (egads!) dark.  Although I was competing with the opening of the beer keg and the lack of a bathroom break for two hours, we had about 100 people engaged in a mainstage conversation – a large group conversation about how we can change the world and build up the JS community.

I also projected the twitterstream and asked the audience to comment via twitter as well.  Here are the top ten comments on what they had to say:

1. Respect the doing, no matter the doer.
2. Be more inclusive.  Don’t discriminate.  Do not hate on people who don’t share your faith or convictions (or lack of it)
3. Teach kids at a much younger age.
4. Mentor other developers, kids, women and other people you hang out with.  Help the noobs (beginners) in jquery.
5. Hack for social good with random hacks of kindness – e.g. Python users group weekend workshops
6. Contribute to the jquery learning site and MDN instead of duplicating fundamentals!
7. Be nice to each other.  Have civil discussion/debate/healthy discourse.  Say what’s wrong and why you won’t use it.  Don’t flame, troll or attack the person.
8. Be positive.  Don’t be negative.  If you dislike something, don’t bash it or be negative in your response.
9. Be constructive in your offer of criticism.  Remind them to come from a place of positivity.  Redirect them toward the positive and/or reframe the conversation into something positive.
10. To make sure your feedback is heard, give feedback one on one.  If you can, pick up the phone or send a personal message.

Perhaps this list can serve as a community credo – building up the JS community to truly change the world!