5 Steps to Poor Listening: The ordinary professional’s guide.
The development of non-technical, soft skills represents a significant choice in the career of IT professionals.
For those who choose to take the road most traveled, here are a few thoughts on how to ensure poor client and peer
relationships, projects that focus on solutions to the wrong problems, and working cross-purposes with your team.
1. Just Keep Talking
Let’s face it -- the more you talk, the less time others get to talk. This way, you completely avoid the issue of
listening all together. Why risk having to pretend you’re listening when you have the opportunity to completely
prevent others from talking?
There’s also a particularly useful secondary effect of this recommendation. The more often you do this, the less
often others want to be around you. Voila! You have also reduced the frequency of situations where you might be
forced to listen.
If you take only one useful tip you take away from this article, this one is it: Flapping your gums will save your
ears.
2. When you’re not talking, think about what you’re going to say next
On occasion, even the best talker among us either runs out of things to say or is rudely interrupted. When this
happens, be prepared to jump right in to step 2. As soon as your mouth stops moving start thinking about how to
resume talking. It’s that simple.
Whether you’re trying to think of the wittiest thing anyone ever said or the most brilliant way to bring the
conversation back to your ideas or issues, poor listeners often use this time to regroup. Be grateful for the
opportunity. Remember, poor listeners feel that talking is a big chance to look smart, important, caring or
charming. When not talking, prepare your next words.
You may want to consider bobbing your head up and down a few times while you’re thinking. If you’re not careful,
the speaker will notice that you’re not listening, and will ask you a question for which you are unprepared. Then
you will be stuck stammering some sort of answer which won’t position you well to continue your speaking. (The
rude solution to this, of course, is to say something condescending like “clearly, you don’t understand,” and then
talk about whatever you were thinking about. It’s inelegant, but it usually makes others stop talking.) Anyway,
when you talk again, it should be on your terms.
3. Interrupt Frequently
Once you’ve figured out what you want to say next, then you’re ready for step 3, interruption. Interruption takes
two major forms: finishing the speaker’s sentence and just doing it. Finishing the speaker’s sentence is
particularly effective since it brings closure to their thought and demonstrates that you understand it completely.
Just starting to talk is usually best done when the speaker is forced to take a breath. This way, you are not both
talking at the same time, which becomes a nasty battle of the talking wills. Remember, others want to talk as much
as you do. If you give them a chance, they’ll just keep talking forever.
4. Look Away
Whether you are talking or not, you always have one tool at your disposal, avoiding eye contact. This prevents the
speaker from getting non-verbal feedback indicating that you’re not listening. Some like to just stare, unfocused
into space. I personally find this difficult to pull off. Some poor listeners prefer to silently hunt the room
for more important or attractive people. There’s always someone better to talk. If you must look at the speaker,
focus on some odd aspect of their appearance, like a piece of spinach between teeth.
5. Never ever, ask clarifying questions
Finally, when you do get the chance to talk, don’t ask questions that help clarify the comments of other speakers.
Doing so would require that you listened to what was said in the first place. It also seals the transfer of
information by confirming what you heard. Additionally, questions invite others to talk, ensuring that you’re
spending too much time listening.
If you consistently follow these guidelines, you will secure your position as an ordinary IT professional. Good
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10 Ways to Give a Bad Presentation
As IT professionals, eventually, we are all called upon to deliver presentations to clients, users, supervisors, or
peers. It’s not something that tends to come naturally to us. We’d much rather be writing code, doing project
plans, or even writing documentation. Almost anything is better than getting up in front of a group of people. In
fact, many consider public speaking to be one of life’s most frightening events.
Because presentations are so important to your careers, C2 Consulting is joining forces with two other companies,
Hill Enterprises and Lee Inc. to jointly develop a hands-on training course specifically designed to help IT
professionals develop these critical skills.
As a preview to this course, here are a few ideas to help you think about how to screw up your next presentation.
If you’d rather not do presentations, just try these out and be assured that you’ll never be invited back to speak
again.
1. Just Wing It
Preparing for a presentation can be a real drag. Don’t bother. Your audience won’t notice. They enjoy listening
to you deliver incoherent and incomplete ideas. Anyway, they know that your time is important, and they can’t
expect you to spend your valuable time preparing. It’s better that you just waste all of the audience’s time.
2. Start Out Weak
An audience typically gives a speaker about 30 seconds before they judge whether to pay attention or not. If you
start out weak and lose them, you’ll never get them back, no matter how good you are later. If you’ve followed
rule #1 and under-prepared, this may be the best way to cover that up. Just mumble for a minute or two and they
won’t be paying enough attention to find out whether you prepared or not.
3. It’s All About Me…Isn’t It?
Why pay attention to who the audience is and what they’re interested in learning. When you have to give a
presentation, it’s all about what you want to tell them. Why be bothered with trying to figure out what they want?
Once you’re in front of them, they’re captive and have to listen, right?
4. It’s All About My Boss…Isn’t It?
If being obsequious is your forte, this is another form of #3. Instead of focusing on your needs, focus on the
needs of that one person you really want to impress. Just talk to the important person. Everyone else in the
audience will understand and respect you for your focus.
5. Substitute Opinions for Facts.
Here’s a sure fire way to lose credibility quickly. If you want to make sure that the audience won’t believe
anything you say, make unsubstantiated claims, or better yet, just state your opinion as if it’s a fact. It makes
you seem more important. You’re the ARBITER of TRUTH.
6. Meander
Personal stories, unrelated topics, musings, witticisms, and irrelevant facts all reinforce the message that you’re
trying to communicate. Audiences love to hear things that start like, “I just have to tell you this…” or “That
reminds me of the time when I just a boy of twelve back in Zanadu and got caught stealing olives from Mr.
McPruder’s tree….”
7. Abandon Your Objective
Coherence and focus are overrated. Your audience doesn’t really care if you start out with one presentation
purpose and seamlessly transition to another one. As long as you smoothly transition from one objective to the
next to the next, the audience will follow along. If you do not clearly move from one to the next, you’re actually
doing #6, meandering.
8. Ignore the Environment
Whether you are the keynote speaker at an industry-wide conference or delivering a proposal to a group of two,
presentations are all the same. Refusing to adapt is the sign of a powerful presenter. Bowing to the environment
is a sign of weakness.
9. Declare Your Own Time Zone
Just start when you start and finish when you finish. Once you’ve got the microphone, you are in control of the
audience’s time. Whatever schedule they set is irrelevant. Possession of the microphone gives you the right to
dictate the time allocation of your audience.
10. Finish Weak
Your conclusion is the last thing that your audience hears, so if you’ve managed to hold their attention even after
following the other rules, it’s what they’ll remember most about your performance. A weak conclusion will help
ensure that they lose sight of what your presentation was supposed to accomplish. It also helps them remember you
in a positive light.
So if you are determined to deliver poor presentations, or to never be invited to do one ever again, following
these rules should get you where you’re going.
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Metaphors, Meaning, and Action
Over the past two weeks, we in the US, and indeed people all over the world have struggled to bring meaning to the
events of September 11. The enormity of the destruction and loss of life has combined with the transfixing
images of planes, buildings, fire and rescuers to become a conceptual pastiche of horror. And in the numbed
aftermath, we try to make sense of it all.
As the events unfolded our national, state, and local governmental officials held impromptu press conferences to
speak to the public. The news anchors and commentators on our radios and televisions, attempted to relate the
up-to-the minute facts and images. And implicit in all this, was the attempt to draw meaning out of facts.
This quest for meaning was expressed in the constant groping for metaphors attempting to relate this incident to
something that we already understand. At first, we heard the language of accidents, tragedies and acts of god.
Then, after it became apparent that these were intentional deeds, the language turned to that of crime. And then
over time, they became acts of war. But for unprecedented events, there are no clean analogs, no easy ways to
frame the unthinkable.
As I switched between the coverage on television, radio and newspapers, I noticed differences in the content and
language of the coverage. Each seemed to focus on the aspects of the story that were suited to their medium.
Newspapers carried long articles summarizing the events of the previous day and background articles about the
buildings, victims, planes, and radical groups. Television seemed to rely heavily on the grisly images replaying
them over and over while waiting for new information to arrive. And radio focused on analysis of experts and
reactions of everyday citizens.
However different the coverage, there was a surprising unanimity in the shifting metaphors being used to describe
the events. Competing television and radio stations would shift from one interpretation to another almost
simultaneously. It was as if the different metaphors were competing in a Darwinian struggle to control meaning,
as if an ecosystem of imagery was at work.
As one metaphor replaced the other, it carried with it all its associated implications. As we thought about crime,
our mental images included investigations, police, search warrants, Miranda Rights, district attorneys, trials,
prisons and the death penalty. With the ascendancy of the war metaphor, we conjured images of soldiers,
battlefields, commando raids, missiles, smart bombs, espionage, victory and defeat.
Our response to each image differs greatly. Not only do the metaphors we chose help us make sense of the
situation, they equally govern the actions that we take in response. Metaphors here are not just interesting tools
of language. They are carriers of meaning, instigators of motivation, and guides to appropriate action.
Select metaphors carefully, they are more than just words.
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What Does Your Email Say About You?
Every day, we send email to our colleagues and clients, but do you ever take a moment to think about what your
messages really say about you? I’m not talking about the message that you’re trying to send to someone else, but
what the form and format of your emails communicate unintentionally. Too often, little details left out or
inadvertently included can suggest that you’re lazy, incompetent, inattentive, mistrustful, or unprofessional.
Here’s my list of things to look out for in your email messages:
1. Spelling. Is everything spelled correctly? This should be a no-brainer with spell checkers, but read what
you’ve written. Remember that spell checkers don’t know when you’ve used a correctly spelled but incorrect word.
2. Grammar. Is the text grammatically correct? Grammar is not just for picky English teachers. If your writing
is grammatically incorrect, it has a much higher probability of being misinterpreted by the recipient. Often,
miscommunicating is worse than not communicating at all.
3. Signature Block. Do all of your emails contain a short, professional signature block with your contact
information? Don’t make people look in their contact manager if they want to call you. Just have your information
inserted in every message. At the same time, you don’t need to include an entire life history including your place
of birth, favorite color and emergency contact list either.
4. Subject Line. Use the subject line to communicate useful information. Let the recipient know what you want
them to know so that they decide what to do with it. Useless subjects or misleading ones can be really annoying.
5. Format. Have you written large impenetrable blocks of text in one long stream of consciousness paragraph?
Break up your ideas so that they’re easier to follow. It doesn’t take much time. Just hit the return key whenever
you are changing thoughts. But don’t go too far in the other direction, leaving islands of text in fields of
spaces. In short, make the format support the message.
6. Length. Emails should generally be short. Have you noticed that e-books have been a complete flop. In part,
it’s because people don’t want to read long things on screens. (Of course there’s an exception for email
newsletters. ; - )
7. Urgent Indicator. This is one of my personal pet peeves. I hate it when people use the urgent indicator for
clearly unimportant email. It gives the appearance that you have no regard for the time and attention of the
reader or that you suffer from a personality disorder that leaves you with delusions of self-importance. Either
way, it’s not a good impression to give.
8. Bandwidth Usage. If you are sending a short one sentence email, don’t send it with a huge graphic signature
block. It just looks wasteful, and for those people who still get email over the phone line, it wastes lots of
their valuable time. If there’s no need for sending big files, don’t.
9. Delivery Receipt. This one is another of my personal pet peeves. Unless someone is sending me a very important
contract or time sensitive document, I want to read my email in private. When I see the little pop up box that
says someone wants a return receipt for non-urgent email, I get the feeling that they don’t really trust me to read
their mail.
Every once in a while, before sending an email to someone else, I’ll send it to myself just to see what it looks
like in my Outlook In Box. It can be surprising, since I’ll notice all sorts of things that I hadn’t intended to
communicate, just by reviewing it in advance. I encourage you to try it. You may be surprised to see how your
emails reflect on you.
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