Are motivational speakers dinosaurs?

One in yesterday’s Non Sequitur comic titled The First Motivational Speaker is.
It is captioned:

“Don’t sweat the small stuff..
And it’s all small stuff!

Well, except for that comet,
which looks kinda big...”

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff...and It’s All Small Stuff was the title of a 1997 book by the late self-help guru Richard Carlson, which was followed by another thirteen Don’t Sweat books. 

The image of a Stegosaurus came from Wikimedia Commons.

Randall Munroe’s 9-1/2 minute TED Talk: Comics that ask “what if?”

I really enjoyed watching this March 2014 TED talk, since I have been reading his XKCD comics for years. Randall discusses two questions:

1) What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90% the speed of light?

2) If all digital data were stored on punch cards, how big would Google’s data warehouse be?

The first question has a surprising answer, that the baseball would become a thermonuclear weapon. His original cartoons had shown the pitch going from right to left. For the TED talk he fixed that detail to more conventionally go from left to right.

The second question visualized 15 exabytes of data as enough punch cards to bury New England about three miles deep. His indirect approach to the answer reminded me of an old essay by science fiction writer Robert Heinlein about estimating the population for the city of Moscow back around 1960.

One of my favorite classic single-panel XKCD comics is SECRET WORLDS. A recent one on TRAIN is hilarious for a very self-centered definition:

“Train:
A machine that grabs the
 earth by metal rails and
 rotates it until the part
 you want is near you.”

The schematic mushroom cloud came from Wikimedia Commons.

How is Crisis Communication different from public speaking?

Wikipedia has a web page about Crisis Communication, but it’s public-relations focused and not very useful. When I went looking for better information, I found it by starting at a web page from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the topic of Crisis & Emergency Risk Communication (CERC). They have a comprehensive, 478-page Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication manual that you can download for free. On the cover is their mantra:

“Be first. Be Right. Be credible.”

There also is a downloadable 58-page Basic CERC Quick Guide. Figure 1-5 on print page 52 is a Spokesperson pocket guide that summarizes how to communicate in a crisis.    

In a crisis people are stressed out. The message you give them needs to be especially clear, simple, and brief. Page 57 of the Quick Guide states six principles of CERC:

“Be First.
If the information is yours to provide by organizational authority—do so as soon as possible. If you can’t provide the information, then explain how you are working to get it.

Be Right.
Give facts in increments. Tell people what you know when you know it, tell them what you don’t know, and tell them if you will know relevant information later.

Be Credible.
Tell the truth. Do not withhold to avoid embarrassment or the possible ‘panic’ that seldom happens. Uncertainty is worse than not knowing. Remember, rumors are more damaging than hard truths.

Express Empathy.
Acknowledge in words what people are feeling - it builds trust.

Promote Action.
Give people things to do. It calms anxiety and helps restore order.

Show Respect.
Treat people the way you want to be treated, even when hard decisions must be communicated.”

How can you follow these principles? In my previous post I described a technique called Message Mapping. I found a very detailed 42-minute video for EPA about it and other tools by  Dr.Vincent T. Covello. Unfortunately, the resolution is poor so many slides are hard to read. A clearer version of the West Nile Virus message map example is shown above.

Covello has presented similar material elsewhere, so you can find his other templates either here or here. You can find all his slides from his March 2010 Warren K. Sinclair keynote lecture on Risk Communication here.

The May/June issue of the Capitol Ideas newslettter from the Council of State Governments has an article titled Communication: Anticipate Prepare and Practice, which discusses the 27/9/3 rule (prepare your sound bite with 27 words, for nine seconds with just 3 messages), and quotes Covello:

“If you don’t keep it short and simple, someone else will make it short and simple for you.”

Message Mapping is a tool for planning your speech

This week I was skimming through Carmine Gallo’s recent book, Talk Like TED; The 9 Public-Speaking Secrets of the World's Top Minds. On pages 197 to 200 he discusses how to structure a speech. He says to build a Message Map in three easy steps using a template like the one shown above. Those steps are:

1. Create a Twitter-Friendly Headline.

2. Support the Headline with Three Key Messages.

3. Reinforce the Three Messages with Stories, Statistics, and Examples.

Where did this really come from? He only refers back to his July 2012 Forbes column, How to Pitch Anything in 15 Seconds.

Message Mapping actually is a very serious crisis communication tool. You can read about it in a 124-page World Health Organization book from 2005 by Randall H. Hyer and Vincent T. Covello called Effective Media Communication during Public Health Emergencies that you can download for free. Section 4.2, Prepare Clear and Concise Messages describes message maps. It is also discussed by Ivy Lin and Dan D. Petersen in a 51-page free EPA publication from 2007, Risk Communication in Action: The Tools of Message Mapping.

An example message map on what people can do to prevent West Nile Virus from the EPA publication is shown above. It is one of seven message maps they use to cover that topic.

Breaking a Barrier - the First Four-Minute Mile

Today is the 60th anniversary of Roger Bannister running the mile in just under four minutes. You can watch a video of that event on YouTube. Another 5-1/2 minute  newsreel video on Man and the Mile discusses other attempts. 

Anthony Robbins discussed the four-minute mile on page 84 of his 1991 book Awaken the Giant Within:

“Do you know the story of the four-minute mile? For thousands of years, people held the belief that it was impossible for a human being to run the mile in less than four minutes. But in 1954, Roger Bannister broke this imposing belief barrier. He got himself to achieve the 'impossible' not merely by physical practice but by constantly rehearsing the event in his mind, breaking through the four-minute barrier so many times with so much emotional intensity that he created vivid references that became an unquestioned command to his nervous system to produce the result. Many people don’t realize though, that the greatest aspect of his breakthrough was what it did for others. In the whole history of the human race, no one had ever been able to break a four-minute mile, yet within one year of Roger’s breaking the barrier, 37 other runners also broke it. His experience provided them with references strong enough to create a sense of certainty that they, too, could ‘do the impossible.’ And the year after that, 300 other runners did the same thing!”

John C. Maxwell repeated that story of 37 and 300 other runners on page 106 of his 1993 book, Developing the Leader Within You. It also showed up on page 12 of the 2003 book Heroes: A Guide to Realising Your Dreams by Jim Stynes, Jon Carnegie, and Paul Currie.  Michael Cioppa repeated it in 2003 on page 27 of his book Success is Not A Miracle: The Science of Achievement. Eyal Yurconi also repeated it on page 116 of his 2006 book Being Great: Winning the Battles Within. So did William J. Nippard, on page 12 of his 2011 book, The Teamwork Ladder.

But, Anthony Robbins got both those numbers wrong. I heard them discussed by Tim Harford on the BBC World Service program More or Less in a segment titled Did Sir Roger Bannister make the ‘impossible’ possible?. Actually only one other man, John Landy, ran a less than four-minute mile in the next year, and just four people did in the 2nd year. Tim also noted that Mr. Robbins later used other numbers, saying it was either 24 in a year or 24 in a few years. So, don’t believe something just because you find it in a book. Make sure what you use in a speech is a true story rather than just a fairy tale. 

The latest and most confused version of the story misspells Roger’s last name, and gets the year wrong. Page 199 of Gary R. Plaford’s 2013 book, Fight Or Flight: The Ultimate Book for Understanding and Managing Stress says:

“A fourth factor critical in looking at success is what we believe. Prior to 1957 it was believed that the human being could not run a mile in under four minutes. That belief was stated by sports writers, by columnists, it was repeated on the radio and on television. It could not be done. The human body was incapable of running that fast for that long. Then, in 1957, Roger Banister did it. He broke the four minute mile. Once he did it, suddenly people believed it was possible.Within that very year thirty seven other runners broke the four minute mile. Within the next year another hundred did it. If we believe something cannot be done, then surely we cannot do it. If, on the other hand we believe something is possible, we will often find a way to achieve it.”  

The plaque image by Jonathan Bowen came from Wikimedia Commons.

Whatever, Like, You Know, and Just Sayin’ were the four most common annoying words or phrases to U.S. adults for the past three years

Back on December 19, 2013 The Marist Institute of Public Opinion in Poughkeepsie, New York released the results of a national survey which asked 1,173 people:

Which one of the following words or phrases do you find most annoying in conversation? 
Just sayin’, Like, Obviously, Whatever, You know, [Unsure]

Results for the most annoying phrase are shown above in a bar chart. (Click on it to see a larger, clearer view). Not obviously, for  2013 they were ranked as follows:

Whatever (38%)
Like (22%)
You know (18%)
Just sayin’ (14%)
Obviously (6%)
[Unsure] 2%)

The same ranking of the top four was found for their surveys done in 2012 and 2011. They also did surveys in 2010 and 2009, and whatever came in first there too. Like also came in second back in 2010.

So, you know, whatever you do, I’m just sayin’ you shouldn’t say like in your speeches. 

Fun with physics - A self-siphoning chain fountain

Back in a school science class you might have learned that a rubber tube can be used to siphon liquid from one beaker to another, as is shown above. Or, your dad might have  shown you how to siphon gas from the tank of your car to refill a gas can for a lawnmower, motorcycle, or boat.




But, watch what happens when you pull the end of a bead chain over the edge of a beaker, as shown in this video by Steve Mould. Surprisingly the chain rises above the rim as a fountain, like it’s inside an invisible tube.

This behavior was explained by John S. Biggins and Mark Warner in a scientific article and on a 12-minute YouTube video. I saw it discussed in a New York Times article on March 3, 2014.   

The image of a siphon is from Wikimedia Commons.