How to infuriate readers of your blog

It’s easy to do, and on January 7th the Shapiro Negotiation Institute in Baltimore did it three ways with a post titled What TED Talks Teaches Us About Public Speaking. It is sad that much of their material is excellent, just poorly structured. Based on this blog post, I’d hesitate to buy one of their programs. 

First, that title should have been What TED Talks Teach Us About Public Speaking, but poor grammar just is a venial sin.

Second, their main problem, was how that post was organized. It’s a pretty but rather useless infographic titled LET TED DO THE TALKING: 8 TED TALKS THAT TEACH PUBLIC SPEAKING. Titles and brief descriptions for eight excellent talks are shown, but they doesn’t provide ANY clickable links to them. Instead those references are buried at the very bottom of the infographic inside the jpg image file. When you try to click on their red TED TALK text, you just get a smaller version of that infographic, which is worthless.

The sixth item in their infographic was titled Connect with the Audience, but they didn’t deliver. To find a talk you have to enlarge the image, save the very bottom part, and then retype the address in your web browser. Instead I went to the TED site and put the title into their search feature.

What could they have done instead? Put the discussion of each talk into a separate image, and then include a clickable link below it. Also, package those images and clickable links in an Acrobat .pdf file that can be downloaded. Another blog option would be to embed the YouTube version for each video, but including eight would make the blog post load slowly.  

Links to the pages at the TED web site (and the YouTube versions) for their eight topics are:

1) Follow the path of influential speeches
The secret structure of great talks by Nancy Duarte, also here on YouTube. 

2) Use the tools in your vocal toolbox
How to speak so that people want to listen by Julian Treasure, also here on YouTube

3) Be engaged
The best stats you’ve ever seen by Hans Rosling, also here on YouTube

4) Keep their attention
How to pitch to a VC by David S. Rose, also here on YouTube

5)“The Golden Circle”
How great leaders inspire action by Simon Sinek, also here on YouTube

6) Connect with the Audience
Once upon a time, my mother by Carmen Agra Deedy , also here on YouTube

7) Body Language
Your body language shapes who you are by Amy Cuddy, also here on YouTube

8) Break the Ice
How I beat stage fright by Joe Kowan, also here on YouTube

Third, begin your post with an irrelevant first paragraph citing a bogus statistic, like this one:

“If it wasn’t for that fact that the statistics haven’t really changed, it would be something of a cliché to point out that when polled, most people list public speaking as their worst fear, even worse than death. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, as many as 74 percent of people feel that way. Basically, that means three out of four people, including so-called “extroverts,” would rather die than speak publicly. And yet, in the world we now live in, with the internet, smartphones, social media conference calls, and Skype, there has never been a time when developing skills in public communication could be more useful in our day-to-day lives.”

That 74% statistic came from the silly Statistic Brain web site. It isn’t actually from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), as I discussed last month. For U.S. adults, a serious national survey sponsored by NIMH found only 21.2% have a fear and only 10.7% have a phobia, both of which are drastically lower than that silly 74%. Anyhow, Either way you look at it, public speaking really is not our greatest fear.

The angry Rembrandt etching came from here at the Library of Congress.

UPDATE January 14, 2015

Yesterday YouTheEntrepreneur reposted that infographic followed by embedding the YouTube versions for those eight TED talks.

UPDATE September 10, 2015

On January 23rd the Shapiro Negotiation Institute put another version of that same imformation at Slideshare. In that presentation you can click on the title for each TED talk and be linked there. That's much better!

8 TED TALKS THAT TEACH PUBLIC SPEAKING from SNIteam

The hand-in-coat gesture, concealed carry, and oratory

Why do people in old paintings often have one hand tucked in their coat or shirt, like the famous portrait of Napoleon shown above?

In a recent Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cartoon Zach Weiner explained:

“Photos were more expensive back then. So, if you needed a picture of yourself, what you’d do is point a gun at a painter and make him paint your portrait. But nobody wants a portrait of himself pointing a gun, so people would hide the gun in their coats while being painted.”

That’s funnier (and more obvious) than an article at Vigilant Citizen in 2009 titled The Hidden Hand that Shaped History which conspiratorially claimed it is a Masonic gesture.

There is a serious scholarly discussion on pages 45 to 63 in the March 1995 issue of The Art Bulletin. Arline Meyer wrote an article titled Re-dressing Classical Statuary: The Eighteenth-Century “Hand-in Waistcoat” Portrait. She discussed how textbooks about rhetoric had covered the use of gestures. On page 57 she described how:

“Directly bearing on the ‘hand in’ posture, and underpinning Nivelson’s description of it as ‘manly boldness tempered with modesty,’ is Bulwer’s ‘Sixth Canon for Rhetoricians,’ which claims that ‘the hand restrained and kept in an argument of modesty, and frugal pronunciation, a still and quiet action suitable to a mild and remiss declamation.’ The identification of modesty with ‘a hand withdrawn’ was first argued by Aeschines of Macedon (390 - 331 B.C.), an actor, orator, and founder of a school of rhetoric who was known for his magnificent voice and expressive gestures. Aeschines claimed that in the decorous days of Pericles and Themistocles, speaking with the arm outside the cloak was considered ill-mannered, and men of old refrained from doing so.” 

I saw a reference to Meyer yesterday in this newspaper article.

Speed geeking - a parallel series of brief presentations

What’s the best way to organize a series of brief presentations, aka Lightning Talks? One possibility is a Pecha Kucha or Ignite Night. Both these formats involve a ballroom, as shown above, with 20 PowerPoint slides being shown for a fixed interval of 20 or 15 seconds each. 

Another is Speed geeking. It is like speed dating but adapted to a group. The audience is divided into a series of small groups. Ideally each group listens to a presentation in a small conference room, and then rotates to the next one, as shown above. For a small group flipcharts might be preferable to PowerPoint (perhaps as printed handouts).

I recently saw Speed geeking mentioned under See also when I again looked at the Wikipedia page about Pecha Kucha. There is a better description of Speed geeking in the NHS IQ Learning Handbook. 

A table summarizes the differences between Speed geeking and Pecha Kucha or Ignite. It’s a more flexible way to organize a series of brief presentations that should be considered, particularly for planning educational sessions. 

A guide for how to find things out - the NHS IQ Intelligence Handbook

Last fall the Improving Quality (IQ) organization at the National Health Service (NHS) released their Intelligence Handbook. It’s an excellent guide to researching that you can either view online with a web browser or download for free as a 42-page Acrobat .pdf file.

It is divided into ten sections titled:

Intro
Contents
Focus
Gather
Store
Interrogate
Analyse
Report
Tools and Resources
Glossary

Almost anyone who writes and delivers speeches will find something useful in this Handbook.

When you skim it, you likely will find things you had not seen before (and different British terminology for those you have seen).

For example, both under Gather and in Tools and Resources there is the phrase Grey Literature with a hyperlink to this page that discusses materials not from the usual commercial publishers (and how and where to find them). 

Under Report and in Tools and Resources there is the phrase Stakeholder Mapping with a hyperlink to another page about analyzing your audience.

NHS IQ also has a Learning Handbook that is worth reading.

Is public speaking universally feared? Of course not!

My Google Alert on public speaking yesterday led me to an article posted on January 3, 2015 at LinkedIn Pulse by Dr. Marla Gottschalk and titled Communication Hacks for 2015 and Beyond. In it she mentions that:

 “Public speaking is universally feared, but rarely conquered.”

Universally means:

“everywhere or in every case; without exception.”

But, there were two surveys done in 2014 that asked U.S. adults the level for their fear about public speaking. Both found that a significant percent of people were Not Afraid At All of public speaking.

One was a YouGov survey that was reported in March. I blogged about it in April. As shown above 23%, or almost a quarter of adults weren’t afraid. They also reported results by gender - 16% of women, and 29% of men.  

The other was the Chapman Survey on American Fears that was reported in October. (See page 66). I also blogged about it. As shown above 34.1%, or over a third of adults weren’t afraid.

Back in February 2014 I blogged about not using absolute statements in a post titled One track minds: Exactly, absolutely, always. Dr. Gottschalk’s statement is a good example of how doing that can get you in trouble.

The smiley icons among the mostly frowny icons shown above approximately represent results from that YouGov survey.

UPDATE January 14, 2015

I forgot to mention that in March 2014 YouGov also did a survey in Britain and got similar results, as is shown above. I had both blogged about that survey and compared it with the U.S. one.

UPDATE February 16, 2015

Here are a couple of smiley graphics summarizing the YouGov and Chapman survey results.

UPDATE October 4, 2015

I found a magazine article in the Nov-Dec 2014 issue of the Journal of Medical Practice Management by H. Harvey and N. Baum with an abstract that begins by incorrectly claiming:

"Nearly every person who has been asked to give a speech or who has volunteered to make a presentation to a group of strangers develops fear and anxiety prior to the presentation."


UPDATE November 29, 2015

The 2015 Chapman survey also found a significant number (36.7%) of American adults were Not Afraid of public speaking.

Can taking Vitamin C improve your public speaking and also do many other wonderful things?

Maybe, maybe not.  An article by Dale Cyphert on Managing Stage Fright says that Vitamin C:

“Reduces the effects of over-exertion, increases energy, stamina and general resistance to stress.  If you catch colds frequently are feel run-down, you night not have the energy left for giving a speech.”

But wait, there’s more! Vitamin C has been claimed to do all sorts of other amazing things. In a nine-minute infomercial, chiropractor Michael Pinkus claims that:

“....The bottom line is without enough Vitamin C and the right type of vitamin C you have low energy, pain, your immune system’s compromised, you’re more prone to cancer, heart attacks, cataracts, allergies, diabetes, the list goes on and on.”

He came up with a product called Super C22 which the Dr. Newton’s Naturals web page says:  

“...is packed with 22 of the most powerful forms of vitamin C, with each serving delivering 1500mg of vitamin C, or 2500% of the Recommended Daily Value. Let Super C22™ help to boost your energy, lower your blood pressure, and even shield against heart disease and stroke...

... You should be getting 3000-4000 mg of vitamin C daily for optimal health....”

At the very bottom of the page (in tiny type) there is the usual disclaimer that:

*”These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.”

Gee whiz! I have heard the longer infomercial on weekend early morning AM radio, and it sure sounded like claims to prevent lots of diseases. It aired Saturday after the 6:00 AM news on KBOI and ran till 6:30.

If you ask a chemist, he’ll tell you there really is only one form of Vitamin C, also known as L-ascorbic acid. It’s a fairly simple molecule of carbon (C), oxygen (O) and hydrogen (H), as shown above. What Pinkus should have said was they use Vitamin C from 22 different plant sources. Why 22? All I can think of is the irrelevant reason that there are 22 letters in the Hebrew alphabet.  

The U.S. National Library of Medicine is part of the National Institutes of Health. They have a MedlinePlus page about Vitamin C with sections on How effective is it? that uses the following categories for organization:

Effective for...
Likely effective for...
Possibly effective for...
Possibly ineffective for...
Insufficient evidence to rate effectiveness for...

The only thing Vitamin C really is effective for is Vitamin C deficiency. It is likely effective for... Iron absorption and tyrosinemia (a genetic order in newborns). Everything else falls in the third category possibly effective for or worse. (Under How it Works, it does say that Vitamin C also plays an important role in maintaining proper immune function). 

Under the last category, Insufficient evidence to rate effectiveness for, they list:

“Mental stress. Limited evidence suggests that vitamin C might reduce blood pressure and symptoms during times of mental distress.”

So, Mr. Cyphert’s claim about resistance to stress really isn’t supported.

Cataracts and Diabetes also are in that category, which disagree with Pinkus’s claims.

How about some cancers? Under the third category, Possibly effective for...,  they mention mouth cancer and other cancers. Under the worst category, Possibly ineffective for..., they list:

Lung cancer, Pancreatic cancer, and prostate cancer.

Under the last category, Insufficient evidence to rate effectiveness for, they list:

Bladder cancer, Breast cancer, Cervical cancer, Colorectal cancer, Endometrial cancer, Esophogeal cancer, Ovarian cancer, and Stomach cancer. Heart disease is also there.

What about pain? Chronic pain is listed under the third category, Possibly effective for.

How about low energy? That’s too vague to even be discussed.

What about that dose of 3000 to 4000 mg/day? It’s sky-high or mega - many times more than recommended. The MedlinePlus page says that the daily recommended dietary allowances (RDAs) are 90 mg for men and 75 mg for women. For women, 3000 to 4000 mg/day is 40 to 53 times what is recommended. That MedlinePlus page also says for adults and pregnant and lactating women not to take more than 2000 mg/day.

What might happen if you take too much?

The MedlinePlus page says that:

“Amounts higher than 2000 mg daily are POSSIBLY UNSAFE and may cause a lot of side effects, including kidney stones and severe diarrhea. In people who have had a kidney stone, amounts greater than 1000 mg daily greatly increase the risk of kidney stone recurrence.”

The last thing you need before or during a speech is severe diarrhea!

On December 21, 2014 a web page of seasonal news at Consumer Reports discussed 5 reasons to skip taking vitamin C for colds. They were:

1) It’s probably too late.
2) You might get kidney stones.
3) Your body will just eliminate it anyway.
4) It could give you diarrhea.
5) It’s not worth the money.

So, skip the excess Vitamin C, since you’ll literally just be pissing away your money.

The ball model of Vitamin C that I added captions to came from Wikimedia Commons.

Only YOU can prevent bad presentations

It’s New Year’s Day, and therefore time to point out, reflect, and make resolutions.

My title borrows from those Smokey Bear public service announcements that once said Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires. Smokey Bear’s images are jealously guarded by the Ad Council. I went back a century at the Library of Congress web site and found another image to adapt  from a classic Navy recruiting poster.

I also went back even further to 1899 for a very different image.

Then I went forward to the late 1930’s for another more abstract image.

Any way you look at it, YOU have the responsibility for thinking before you write a speech, fire up PowerPoint (or Excel, or Word), or finally open your mouth before an audience. Please don’t make your audience do the Goren Lean - turn their heads  90 degrees to the left just to read a vertical caption on a vertical bar chart.

If you’re looking for inspiration, then download the text from the 2014 EAST Oriens lecture by Grace S. Rozycki, MD, titled The Strength That It Takes: Ten Lessons Learned From 28 Years on the Front Lines, which appeared in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, July 2014, V77, N1. (Just Google EAST 2014 Oriens lecture to find a link to the .pdf file). Her ten lessons are:

1. Walk the Walk and Earn Your Stripes
2. Crystallize Your Goals and Prioritize Them So That First Things Come First
3. Value Emotional Intelligence
4. Learn Leadership Skills and Ensure That They Develop Over Time
5. Learn to Work as a Team
6. Operate From a High Moral compass
7. Learn to Manage Stress
8. Be Service Oriented
9. Be Prepared to Fail, and More Importantly, Learn From It
10. Understand That Fleeting Success Comes Easy but Longevity Is Another Story

This also might be a good time to download and read Tom and David Kelley’s article on how to Reclaim Your Creative Confidence that appeared in the December 2012 issue of the Harvard Business Review. It’s time to get beyond four fears of a) the messy unknown; b) being judged; c) taking the first step; and d) losing control of things.