Category: personal

Communications styles

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When you absolutely must get a message through to someone, how do you decide to communicate it?  What if this person is a complete stranger to you up to now?

One of the important lessons I’ve learned in Toastmasters is that you have to consider the recipient’s preferred channel of communication.  Just because I’m comfortable with e-mail doesn’t mean everyone I want to talk to is as connected as I am.  Some people still don’t have e-mail (like my parents!), some don’t check their e-mail regularly, and some may get a legitimate message caught up in an overly-aggressive spam filter and never see it.  (Though more and more, people who don’t like or use e-mail at all are becoming less common; even my parents will probably be getting e-mail later this year.)

The primary methods used in 2011 are electronic methods and phone calls.  Under “electronic”, I include e-mail primarily, but also things like Facebook (status posts or private messages), LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs, on-line chat, and cell phone texting.  I can’t imagine anyone relying on faxes for personal communications (the TM membership application form still included a space for a fax number until the most recent revision!), and personal letters by post are considered slow and quaint by most (though a handwritten card is often received with delight!).

So usually, the choice comes down to e-mail or phone.  When you want to talk to someone specifically, consider your past encounters with that person — what method did that person use?  And also consider your message; is it something sensitive, something that could be misunderstood, or something that requires a two-way discussion, where intonation may provide a critical subtext?  If so, use the phone!

Is it a simple announcement or routine request?  Is it someone you know well, who will understand your message, or at worst, if they misunderstand, it’s easily rectified?  Then electronic is OK, and you can use e-mail, or some other form (perhaps a Facebook message is more likely to get read, or you share Skype access?).

What if you need to get a message out to a lot of people?  E-mail is often the choice here, but at the risk of the recipients not really getting the message.  It may be necessary to follow up with individual phone calls.

Are you asking the recipient for a favor, something that may be hard?  Make it as personal a communication as possible.  Face to face is best, or perhaps a phone call.  E-mail to one person may be OK if you have an established relationship and trust, but a broadcast e-mail to a lot of people will likely be ignored.

For example, what if you need to find someone to be the Toastmaster of your next meeting?  If it’s someone you can readily see in person (maybe you work together), then ask in person (or perhaps a videoconference?).  A phone call is a decent alternative.  An e-mail may work.  But if you send an e-mail blast to 20 people in one message, you can likely expect no response at all (they all think someone else will do it).

The next time you need to communicate with someone, consider their preferences.  It’s the best way to make sure the message gets through clearly, without misunderstanding, and to generate the desired action.

Why I’m passionate about Toastmasters

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Leaders have to be passionate about their cause.  They have to truly believe in their goals, and inspire the same in others.  I’ve been asked why I’m passionate about Toastmasters.

The reason?  We create change.  Positive, constructive, uplifting change.  I’ve seen lives changed by joining Toastmasters, including my own.  I’ve seen shy people discover their innate abilities to speak up and speak out about issues they believe in.

I’ve seen Toastmasters members grow in so many ways, not just by becoming a better speaker, not just by becoming a better leader, but by becoming a better person.  They learn how to communicate, to listen, to give feedback, to think on their feet and sound smart when they talk.

Passion is what drives leaders to be great leaders — if you don’t believe in what you’re doing, your followers will notice, and performance suffers, if not turning into outright failure.  Passion is what drives excellence and success!

Toastmasters members get promotions at work, they find spouses, they find friends, they network, they find jobs, and most of all, they find themselves.  They discover abilities they didn’t know they had.  They blossom and grow and become outstanding human beings.

People enter Toastmasters at all levels and skills, and wherever they are, Toastmasters brings it up another level or two or ten.  There’s no passing grades, there’s no way to compare one DTM to another DTM and say they’ve learned the same set of skills.  Instead, we can confidently say that each member is better, much better, than when they gave their Icebreaker.

And confidence is one of the biggest things that Toastmasters gives people.  We show them that they can succeed, and succeed well.  That all they have to do is try, get (and give) constructive actionable feedback in a safe environment, and then do it again, even better the next time.

Some of the past annual themes have touched on these strengths, and the ones that have spoken the most to me include:

  • Friends Helping Friends Succeed (JoAnna McWilliams, 2000-01)
  • Changing Lives, One at a Time (Jon Greiner, 2004-05)
  • Confidence. Leadership. Service. (Gary Schmidt, 2009-10)

So many other annual themes are great too, I hesitate to name only a few.  But they really characterize well what we are doing in Toastmasters.  It’s not just giving speeches.  It’s more.  A LOT more.

I remember my (first) Icebreaker …

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It was ten years ago this month that I gave my first Icebreaker speech, the start of my Toastmasters journey.  As we approach New Year’s, it’s a good time to reflect on our progress, and consider our future.

While working on my MBA (Masters of Business Administration), a couple of the instructors mentioned Toastmasters as a useful way to improve presentation skills.  I was never terribly bothered by having to give a speech, no more than any other sort of work assignment, but I can’t say I was terribly good at it either, and I certainly had never given a speech in front of more than 20-30 people.

A few months after I graduated, I saw a sign in the lobby of the building I worked in announcing a Toastmasters meeting right in the building.  I figured it couldn’t get much easier than that, so I decided to go check it out.  There were several speeches, but what I remember most is a woman who gave what I later learned was the visual aids speech.  Her topic?  The fearsome critter known as the jackalope.  At the end of her speech, she reached under the lectern and pulled out a stuffed jackalope!  It was a great speech, very well-presented.

After another meeting or two, I filled out a membership application and joined.  My Icebreaker came soon after, and it was exactly ten years ago this month.  Since I was doing a lot of traveling, mostly for work, my title was “Travel Broadens One’s Mind”.

My speech outline was a dozen typed lines (I didn’t write it out verbatim), starting with growing up on a farm in Iowa with parents who had never been out of the country, to my first trip abroad (London and Paris for work), a trip around the world (including a leg on the Concorde SST), favorite vacation spots, and places I wanted to go.

I do remember being nervous, as these were all practiced polished speakers who were going to critique my work afterward!  But TradeMasters is a good strong club, and the evaluation gave me the courage and strength to continue on with the rest of my CC.  And I was surprised to learn that people thought I had a good (and natural) sense of humor!

From there on, it took me about a year and a half to earn my CC award, but that’s another story.  Here’s the evaluation PDF.

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all my readers!

Invest in education

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Education is such an important thing throughout life.  Toastmasters is a great example of adult education, but I think we need to invest more in youth education.  Kids who drop out of school are far more likely to get involved in gangs, commit crimes, go to prison, or at the very least, end up in low-paying menial jobs.  And it’s not just the “dumb” kids who drop out of school, ones who wouldn’t do well anyway, it’s the smart ones too.

A lot of the problems in the U.S. can be attributed to poverty, and poverty is due to not working.  Not working is due to either not wanting to work (poor work ethic) or not having the skills to get a good job.

That’s where our public schools let us down, especially in urban areas (and note that I live in Chicago, the third-largest city in the US).  The overall drop-out rate in Chicago is 43% … those are people who will likely never get a good job, and at great risk of falling into a life of crime.

My MBA alma mater keeps asking for donations, but I keep thinking that $1000 would do a LOT more people a LOT more good if it was given to the public schools.  Or better yet, if our government could do a better job of supporting our public schools.  We have to make sure those dollars will be well spent, of course, and that includes making sure we recruit and retain the best teachers, and get the worst teachers moved into a different career that better fits their skills and ambitions.

The return on education (ROE, like return on investment, ROI) is immense, far greater than anything else we could do with our tax dollars.  From the New York Times:

Alan B. Krueger, an economics professor at Princeton, says the evidence suggests that, up to a point, an additional year of schooling is likely to raise an individual’s earnings about 10 percent.

For someone earning the national median household income of $42,000, an extra year of training could provide an additional $4,200 a year. Over the span of a career, that could easily add up to $30,000 or $40,000 of present value. If the year’s education costs less than that, there is a net gain.

And that’s just the personal benefit!  There’s also a harder-to-measure public benefit as well. The U.S. Joint Economic Committee Study said:

Denison estimated that education per worker was the source of 16 percent of output growth in nonresidential business. In another study done for the Rand Corporation, 21 percent of the growth in output from 1940-1980 was the result of an increase in average schooling levels. Estimates of the effect of human capital on economic growth in the United States mostly range from 10 to 25 percent, although some recent evidence disputes this finding.

By improving the productivity of American workers, education increases the wealth of the United States. To illustrate the magnitude of the effect of increased educational levels on economic growth in the United States, consider the effect on gross domestic product (GDP) if educational levels had stopped rising in 1959. In real terms (chained 1992 dollars), GDP rose from $2,210.2 billion in 1959 to $7,269.8 billion in 1997. If one were to assume that increased education levels contribute 16 percent to economic growth, and that this education improvement did not occur, the result would be that in real terms 1997 GDP would be lower by approximately $1,260 billion dollars, standing at just over $6,009 billion in 1997.

The payoff won’t happen immediately, it’s a much longer-term investment than politicians are usually willing to envision.  It will take 10-20 years before the results become visible.  But it’s so important, and so large an impact, we’ve got to do it.  For more details, there’s an interesting program called “Every Child a Graduate” that talks about this in depth.

Invest in the future, invest in education, at all levels, from elementary and secondary schools, to adult education and Toastmasters.  Lobby your government to drastically improve public schools, improve the quality of teaching, stop dropouts, and increase the graduation rates.  The future of our nation depends on it.

Toastmasters legacy?

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Somewhere around the time that I was moving into district leadership, I think it was when I was running for Lt. Gov’r of Marketing (LGM), I was mentioning Toastmasters more often to family and friends, and my father casually mentioned that he had been a Toastmaster for a while.

He’d never talked about it before, and it turns out I was just 2-3 years old when he was involved.  He thinks it was at most 6 months one winter, then the spring planting season on the farm required him to miss a few months, and he never went back.  He says he did maybe 2-3 speeches, and was favorably impressed with it, it just didn’t fit into a farmer’s schedule.

Now, he’s a member of another college/community organization that requires him to write and deliver (orally) a major paper (usually historical in nature) once every two years.

The Toastmasters club in the town I grew up in is long defunct, but with a college there (central Iowa), they should try one again.  It’s too far away for me to provide any sort of direct support though.

I guess that makes me a Toastmasters “legacy”!

ACTHA Certified Leader

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I’ve been going to some evening classes about how to run a condominium association, and I passed all the tests!  I’m now an “ACTHA Certified Leader”!  I’ve been on the board of my condo association since the developer turned it over to us in about 2004 or 2005, and have been the board secretary for a couple of years now.

It’s certainly a challenge building a consensus among the board members at times!  But my home is my biggest investment, and the upkeep on a condo is largely under the domain of the association board, so I’ve always thought it important to be involved with that.

Treasure your loved ones every day

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My dog Buffy (9 1/2 years old, Samoyed) has been acting very lethargic the last few weeks, along with some nosebleeds and loss of appetite.  Tuesday evening, I found out she had an inoperable brain tumor.  Tonight, the veterinarian made a house call to put her to sleep.  I never knew I could feel such grief; my last personal loss was my grandfather back in 1995.

This photo was taken less than an hour before she went to rest.  She was on some very good painkillers her last day.  I wish I could have had some.

New job!

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On Tuesday, I started a new job with Northern Trust. The work is similar to what I did at UBS, I’m doing application performance work, but in the new job, it’s end to end, much more cross-functional. One of the biggest challenges is to get different groups (client, server, database, web services, middleware, application) to all work together when a problem occurs. It’s certainly quite interesting stuff, and I’m learning a lot of new things, since the scope goes beyond just networks (my old job).