Does your speaking voice sound too robotic?

Perhaps you should vary both your pitch and speaking rate. Yesterday at Computerworld there was a brief, humorous Shark Tank article titled To stop speaking to a real person, press 0. It said:

“The call center for this college's IT help desk has one particular staffer who's really, really good at his job, reports a pilot fish in the loop.

‘He's calm, professional and succinct,’ fish says. ‘So much so, in fact, that one caller took him for a voice-response system and demanded to speak to a ‘real person.’
 
‘The caller would not accept the staffer's word that he was, in fact, a real person.'
 
'He continued to demand to speak to a real person until the staffer transferred the caller to his supervisor.’ “

An image of Robby the Robot came from Wikimedia Commons.

Did Jay Leno ever compare the fears of public speaking and death?

Probably not. It came from a mixup about which comedian famously had joked about that topic. I ran across claims that Jay had said:

“I guess we’d rather be in the casket than delivering the eulogy.”

Zac Johnson posted about it on January 22, 2015, and then pastor Nelson Fernandez, Jr. posted on August 20, 2015. Pastor Fernandez might have gotten it from Andy Braner’s earlier 2015 book, No Fear in Love: Loving Others the Way God Loves Us. I first found it in a June 4th post by Oliver Tuffney.

My Google search found the Leno claim seems to originally have come from Ronald A. Tomo’s 2011 book, Notes to Jacqui: A Polio Survivor's Thoughts to his Daughter. His version says coffin instead of casket:

“I once heard a joke which I believe was aired on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno having to do with an alleged survey about the greatest fears people have in life.

‘A study showed that the number one fear people have is Public speaking and the number two fear was death. So, to put this in perspective, that means people would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy.’ “

On May 28th I blogged about Did Woody Allen ever compare the fears of public speaking and death? and discussed how that really came from a joke by Jerry Seinfeld on his TV show in 1993.

Was Fairview really the best street name you could come up with?

Word choices matter. Names can attract or repel people.

Fairview Avenue is a four-lane shopping street that runs west from 16th Street in downtown Boise over to Meridian, where the name changes to Cherry Lane.

Fair isn’t the best adjective, but it also isn’t the worst. Why not good or great? Foulview Avenue could be the road past a sewage treatment plant. That name would not help to sell real estate.

In south Boise there is a Victory Road, but no Defeat Road. Further south there also is an Amity Road, but no Emnity Road. 

In Indianapolis, Indiana there is a Ditch Road which runs north from West 73rd St. to West 116th St. When I asked about it, I was told that back before it was paved:

“When it’s dry it’s a road, and when it rains it’s a ditch.”

How to Communicate - Bloomberg Businessweek on the Takata Airbag Inflator Recall

On April 14th I blogged about the huge Takata airbag inflator recall in a post titled How not to communicate - Honda told me my car is literally da bomb.

On June 2nd Bloomberg Businessweek posted a magazine article about this mess titled Sixty Million Car Bombs: Inside Takata’s Air Bag Crisis. That article is the cover story and it appears on pages 38 to 43 of the June 6th printed magazine.

It is an excellent example of how a business magazine can deliver in-depth coverage on a topic beyond what can be found in newspaper articles. When you research a topic for a speech, don’t forget to check magazine databases at your friendly local public library. 

The bomb image came from Openclipart.

23 skeletons for storytelling

Story structure is important. On May 22nd at the new digital magazine web site called Presentation Guru Gavin McMahon posted a very useful article titled Story structure - the hidden framework that hangs your story together. He shows 23 examples by strorytellers ranging from Aristotle to Vonnegut.

The image of a skeleton from leaping horse by Eadweard Muuybridge came from the Library of Congress.

Did Woody Allen ever compare the fears of public speaking and death?

No, he did not. I just read a May18th post by Dr. Michael Thweatt titled The Fear of Death on his Psychosmology blog which bizarrely claimed that:

“Woody Allen once observed that the fear of public speaking was the number one reported phobia, even ranking above the fear of death. He concluded that people must be more afraid of delivering the eulogy than being in the coffin.”

A Google search did not reveal any source for that statement other than Dr. Thewatt’s blog post, so it just is his ipse dixit. Apparently he confused Woody Allen with Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry made that comparison on multiple occasions, as I discussed in March 2015.

Woody said some other things about life and death like that:

“Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.”

“Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?”

“There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?”

“On the plus side, death is one of the few things that can be done just as easily lying down.”

“It is impossible to experience one’s death objectively and still carry a tune.”

“Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

The caricature of Woody Allen by Harutyun Chalikyan came from Wikimedia Commons.

PayScale survey found 39% of hiring managers felt that recent grads lacked public speaking skill

On May 17th PayScale issued a press release about their 2016 Workforce-Skills Preparedness Report.

A bar chart shows percentages for nine hard skills. (Click on it for a larger, clearer view).  44% of hiring managers felt that recent grads lacked writing proficiency. At 39% Public speaking was second. Over a third of hiring managers felt that recent grads lacked four hard skills: writing proficiency 44% public speaking 39%, data analysis 36%, and industry-specific software 34%.

Another bar chart shows percentages for eight soft skills. Over a third of hiring managers felt that recent grads lacked six soft skills: critical thinking problem solving 60%, attention to detail 56%, communication 46%, leadership 44%, ownership 44%, and interpersonal skills/teamwork 36%.

A third bar chart compares how prepared for a full time job both hiring managers and recent grads thought recent grads were. There were four levels: Extremely prepared, Mostly prepared, Minimally prepared, and Unprepared. As shown above, 25% of recent grads thought they were Extremely prepared, but only 8% of managers thought they were. 62% of recent grads thought they were Mostly prepared, but only 42% of managers thought they were. Just 11% of recent grads thought they were Minimally prepared, but 35% of managers thought they were. Finally, just 3% of recent grads thought they were Unprepared, but 15% of managers thought they were.