Presentation timer leads to a visit from the bomb squad

Many Toastmasters clubs use fancy, programmed presentation timers. This device consists of a lunchbox holding three colored lights. It looks similar to a traffic light, and is wired to a digital timer. Both pieces sit on the table in view of the speaker. The lights warn the speaker about how he is doing relative to his allotted time. For example, for a 5 to 7 minute speech the green light goes on at 5 minutes, the yellow at 6 minutes, and the red at 7 minutes. These timers used to sell for ~$250. I saw one being used just yesterday.

On Tuesday morning, July 28th, in north metro Columbus, Ohio an employee set up such a programmed timer in a conference room at the JP Morgan Chase Bank’s McCoy Center complex. Unfortunately someone else did not recognize that device. They decided it looked suspiciously like a time bomb. After panicking they called in an emergency shortly after 10:00 am. A couple thousand of the approximately 8,500 people were evacuated from Wings J through P of the 2 million-square-foot building.

By 10:15 am the Columbus Division of Fire had responded with their bomb squad, robot, and paramedics. They eventually identified that the device in question was, in fact, quite harmless. Meanwhile, many employees waited out in the parking lot. Several were overcome by the heat, and were treated by paramedics. Shortly after 1:00 pm the emergency finally was over, and all employees were allowed back into the building.

What did this fiasco cost? Assume 2000 people times 3 hours, times $16 per hour, and the result would be $96,000. That’s a really expensive timer!

If you have an iPhone, then you can get a presentation timer application program for $2 or less. Toastmasters also sells a little flip book with three 6” by 8” timing cards for just $2.50.

At our Toastmasters club we are low-tech, so our Timekeeper uses a $10 Deluxe Sports Stopwatch from Radio Shack. We have three homemade cloth flags that one of our crafty members made. Our Timekeeper holds them up in succession to show the speaker how they are doing. So far we have not been visited by our bomb squad.

James Feudo mentioned this fiasco yesterday on his Overnight Sensation blog. He concluded that it gave new meaning to the expression that: “My speech is THE BOMB”. I saw two more newspaper reports about the incident, and thought it was bizarre enough to tell again with a bit more detail.

Who said to picture your audience naked?

In a post yesterday on his Speaker Confessions blog Scott Berkun asked where the questionable advice about picturing your audience naked came from. He said he had already tried the following and come up empty:

1.Asked Toastmasters International Headquarters
2. Tried various Google/Internet searches
3. Looked in over 50 books on public speaking
4. Asked some presentation experts

I took a crack at his question, and found an answer via Google Book Search. It makes sense, since that source was someone very well-known for his mastery of public speaking.

In Dorothy Sarnoff’s book, Speech Can Change Your Life, 1970, on page 199 it says that: “Winston Churchill overcame his early fear of audiences by imagining that each of them was sitting there naked.”

A similar quote (with two additional celebrities) also appears in Dorothy Leeds book, PowerSpeak, 2003, on page 33: “Winston Churchill liked to imagine that each member of the audience was naked. Franklin Roosevelt pretended that the members all had holes in their socks. Carol Burnett thinks of them sitting on the commode.”

I much prefer Franklin Roosevelt’s image choice. By the way, the cartoon above is a color version of the only nude image we have sent outside of our Solar System (the little plaque on the Pioneer 11 spacecraft).

Bullfighting the Mehrabian Myth

If you have been reading about public speaking, or sales, or other topics involving communication, then you probably have seen a bar or pie chart similar to the one shown above. Or, perhaps it just was a table or some text. Typically this startlingly specific information about the primary importance of nonverbal communication will be presented as revealed wisdom (“experts say”).

Sometimes the source will be credited properly to Professor Albert Mehrabian at UCLA. Those three percentages often are discussed as if 42 years ago they were carved magically onto stone tablets, and then carried over the Sepulveda Pass to Westwood. For a recent example, see page 10 of Brian Tracy’s 2008 book Speak to Win which you can view over at Google Books.

On a June 2, 2009 blog post Olivia Mitchell discussed Why The Stickiest Idea in Presenting is Just Plain Wrong. She pointed out that Mehrabian’s results apply to some narrow situations, but have been treated as universal truth. I applaud her stepping up as the matador in this bullfight. Her post links to 19 other recent posts discussing why the popular interpretation is just a myth.

Mehrabian has even said on his web site to:

“Please note that this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable. Also see references 286 and 305 in Silent Messages -- these are the original sources of my findings”.

I got curious, followed some of Olivia Mitchell’s links, and found that this topic has been kicking around for a long time. Back in 1994 (or 15 years ago) Dr. C. E. "Buzz" Johnson wrote about the Myth of Nonverbal Dominance. In 1999 (10 years ago) Herb Oestreich discussed Let’s Dump the 55% 38% 7% Rule. In 2004 (5 years ago) Dale H. Emery wrote about Misrepresenting Mehrabian.

The recent flurry of blog posts is unlikely to finish this bullfight. There are plenty of books, newsletters, and blog posts repeating the myth. It will be read again and spread again to a fresh crop of uncritical readers. We probably can look forward to yet another decade of miscommunication about this aspect of communication. Get out your capes and swords, and bring on the bulls!

Pubic speaking???

I read that phrase yesterday in an article title on the eHow web site. They clearly meant to instead say “public speaking.” Pubic is a word too though, so a computer program just for checking spelling will not flag it. A careful human proofreader likely would have found it and fixed it.

A typographical or grammar error in the title of an educational web page (or blog post) already raises multiple questions:

1. Do you not know what you are doing?

2. Do you just not care?

3. In either case, why should I bother to read further?

4. Is your content really so wonderful I should ignore your lack of form?

5. Would I be disappointed if I bought your e-book, CD, or DVD?

6. Should I avoid hiring you?

If I do choose to read further, then I will not be either surprised or upset when I see one error every 1000 to 4000 words (or an error rate of 0.1% to 0.025%). But this week I read a blog post with 10 errors in just 400 words. That is an error rate of 2.5%! Both the horn and flashing red light for my mental bozo alarm went off. That blog did not get added to my RSS reader.

Obvious lack of attention to details suggests sloppy thinking. Most people will never tell you if they are annoyed or even appalled. They just will leave, and you may never get them to return.

Getting absolutely all of the errors out of a book (~100,000 words) is almost impossible. If you don’t believe me, then go to Google, set the options to search in books, and enter the phrase “pubic speaking”. You will find over 100 results!

An unusual sound system disaster

Is there anything worse than having a sound system with a dead microphone? There is, and I encountered it last year. For a while it seemed like my talk was going down in flames.

In January 2008 I gave a technical talk. It was for a corrosion meeting held at the ski resort in Sun Valley, Idaho. There were presentations in one half of the Inn ballroom all day Thursday. The wireless microphone, sound system, the laptop computer, and digital projector all worked perfectly.

My talk was the second one on Friday morning. Our chairman handed me the microphone. Just as I was about to begin speaking, we all heard another voice take over the sound system. He began with, “Welcome to the annual refinery meeting!” My microphone acted like it was turned off, and the other speaker continued by reciting their safety record. Then he began discussing production statistics.

Our chairman sent someone running down the hall for the audio-visual staff. They got our sound back after three or four minutes, but it seemed like forever to me. What could have gone wrong only on the second day?

The large ballroom had been split by a movable wall to accommodate two different meetings. On Thursday no one was using the other half of the ballroom, so their wireless microphone had been switched off. The staff had forgotten to split the sound system into two independent parts. On Friday the other half of the room started their meeting later than we did. As soon as their master wireless microphone was switched on it overrode ours, and it fed the speakers for the entire room.

Fortunately this is an uncommon situation. Unfortunately, unless you are a skilled mime, there is not much you can do about it.

It is more common to encounter an adjacent ballroom with amplified music. An accountant told me about a tax refresher course held next to a Native American Powwow. Their speaker could not compete with drums and chants. Bagpipes also are rather piercing.

In a previous post I mentioned having a projector bulb fail as I began a long technical talk. With more forethought I could have begun without using visual aids. You can too, if you have planned, written out, and outlined your introduction.

Building leadership one success at a time

That was the title for the Toastmasters Leadership Institute held yesterday at the lovely Boise Bible College. Courtney White from BSU gave the keynote address on The front end of leadership – five lessons from motivational science. Her lessons were:

1. Break from the past - it’s different now.
2. Create urgency - now is the time.
3. Provide easy on ramps - make the first step simple.
4. Foster intrinsic motives - build referent power.
5. Adapt - people and situations are different!

The Vice President – Education training session was held in a room containing refreshments on two tables and a long counter. The mingled smells of coffee, lemonade, and cinnamon buns made it hard to concentrate on the topic, but my patience was eventually rewarded.

The brand new Boise Young Professionals club was there, as was Club #61 (the oldest club in town, from back in 1936).

Why do I write this blog?

This is my virtual platform for speaking to the world. It got started last year when I agreed to take over as Vice President-Education for the Capitol Club, the Toastmasters International club I belong to here in Boise, Idaho. I wanted an easy way to share information with the members of my club (and anyone else beyond who wanted to learn more about public speaking). This month I began my second one-year term as Vice President-Education. So, I expect to keep writing for another year. This is my 125^th post.

Why didn’t I just write articles in my club or District newsletter? In the past couple years the club newsletter has been sporadic. District 15 has an online Newsletter called The Pulsebeat. I wrote a brief article for the Spring 2008 issue, but the archive disappeared when the District 15 web site was redone. However, that article became one of my first blog posts, and you can find it right here.

The blog also has lots of links to other useful articles. Like Woodrow Wilson, “I use not only all the brains I have, but all I can borrow”.

My interest in Toastmasters had been rekindled by Cleon Cox when I lived in Portland. Cleon had added a blog to the web site for his Job Finders Support Group. My blog post about elevator speeches,What do you do that can help me?, was a guest post on Cleon’s blog. A printable version lives over here on Cleon’s web site. Two more of my articles about job search there are about magazine articles and university web sites.