Real and Imaginary Quotations

On June 3rd there was an article at LinkedInPulse by Patricia Fripp about How to Use Quotes in Public Speaking. She suggested that you get them from people in your life, or the audience you are addressing.

One of my personal favorites is my older brother’s first complete sentence:

“It has to be a certain way.” - Harry K. Garber

Harry wrote an article in the Encyclopedia of Chemistry titled What a Crime Lab Does, It Does with Chemistry. If you Google his name, you’ll find references to court cases like People vs Carreira where he’s the guy at the New York State Police lab who signed a certificate for the simulator solution (used to calibrate a Breathalyser for seeing if people were intoxicated while driving).  

You also could quote the famous, if you check that they really said what they were claimed to have said. In October 2015 comedian John Oliver created a web site called Definitely Real Quotes that generates plausible quotes displayed along with a picture of either himself or one of the following dozen famous people:

Aristotle
Winston Churchill
Confucius
Marie Curie
Amelia Earhart
Albert Einstein
Ben Franklin
Gandhi
Thomas Jefferson
Karl Marx
Theodore Roosevelt
Shakespeare

When I tried it, I got an image of Churchill holding up the famous World War II V-for Victory two-fingers and the quote shown above. Another one that came up was:

“I am objectively great at f**king. The best. 
 - Benjamin Franklin”

But that sounds more like one of Donald Trump’s recent tweets.

Earlier this month there was a Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal cartoon that began by claiming:

“You can get people to believe anything just by lying about who said it.”

The image of Winston Churchill came from Wikimedia Commons.

Does public speaking training always work?

Of course not! But, if you start from almost zero like the barefoot boy in a one-room schoolhouse shown above, almost anything will help.

When you already have some experience (whether at the apprentice, journeyman, or master level) before you begin training you need to ask both 1) Does the trainer know more than you do? and 2) Does he know how to communicate it? If not, then you will be wasting your time and money.

On April 15, 2016 Gavin Meikle blogged about Does public speaking training work? He discussed but did not link to an article at Forbes in 2012 by Kristi Hedges titled Confessions of a Former Public Speaking Trainer: Don’t Waste Your Money. I had blogged about it on April 23, 2012 in a post titled Does the cost for public speaking training outweigh the benefits? In that post I mentioned one can view training as going on a journey. Depending on where you begin and how far you need to go any one of four ways might make the most sense. Ranked by decreasing time and increasing cost they are:

1. Joining a Toastmasters club is being given a map and then like driving your own 4x4 vehicle on a dirt road.

2. Taking an introductory public speaking class at a college or university is like going on a bus tour.

3. Attending a commercial workshop is like hiring a guide with a luxury car.

4. Using a speaking coach is like waving down and hiring a taxi.

Gavin’s post suggested you ask the following very pertinent questions before taking a course:

A]  Will you have the chance to practice your speaking at least twice during the course?

B]  Will your speech be recorded and will you receive copies of the videos?

C]  What’s the group size?  Remember, the more participants there are, the less time there will be to practice. If the group size is larger than seven, do they have a second trainer?

D]  Will you receive individual feedback from the trainer

E]  Will they focus more time on your mistakes or your strengths? (Believe me, concentrating on strengths creates much faster behavioral change.)

F]  Will you receive feedback from your fellow trainees?

G]  Will you be asked to give feedback to your fellow trainees? (Having to give feedback makes you pay close attention and helps you notice the little differences that make a big difference.)

H]  Is the trainer an accomplished public speaker themselves and do they have relevant business experience?

I]  Do they teach a “one right way” approach or do they help you find your own unique speaking style?

Toastmasters works for lots of people, if you take the time to research and find the right club. It did for me because on my first visit I luckily found one (Capitol Club) with an eclectic variety of experienced speakers I could learn from by watching. They included my mentor Bill Kearley, a veterinarian with an MBA. Another was Jim Poston, an opera singer and former TV news anchorman who currently teaches both theater and communication. A third was Michael Kroth, a University of Idaho education professor with both an MBA and a PhD who had written four books. Others included Duncan Richardson, who owns and runs The Academy of World Taekwando and appeared on American Ninja Warrior.

The 1874 image of a young orator came from the Library of Congress.

Running away from Toastmasters

On June 17th Jane Genova blogged about Toastmasters - Style over substance, and said she agreed with Jame’s Feudo’s 2012 blog post analysis (The Problem with Toastmasters) of Toastmasters International.

Jane’s post is as interesting for what it leaves out as for what it says. She said:

“I experienced what Feudo complains about during the three weeks I recently attended Toastmasters' meetings. At the end of this month I have to deliver a one-hour presentation. So, I decided, it was time I fine-tuned my speaking skills. Ever since I had started writing speeches for corporate executives, my colleagues have been pushing me to join Toastmasters.”

Just three weeks? Why not three, or six, or twelve months? How far did Jane actually get in their basic Competent Communication manual? She didn’t mention having given ANY of the ten rather brief speech projects in it. The first project is a 4 to 6 minute speech, the last is 8 to 10 minutes, and the other eight are 5 to 7 minutes. I was in Toastmasters for four years, as I discussed in my August 8, 2011 post about Moving on beyond Toastmasters.

One of Jame’s earlier blog posts, Tips for Toastmasters: How to get the most out of your Toastmasters experience, suggested that you should:
 
1]  Commit to speak at every meeting.
2]  Commit to earning your CC (Competent Communicator) or equivalent in your first year.
3]  Become an officer.
4]  Show up at meetings.
5]  If you’re new, get a mentor. If you’ve been around for a while, be a mentor.
6]  Get to know the other members of your club.
7]  Visit other clubs.
8]  Attend conferences.

The Competent Communication manual begins with The Icebreaker (4 to 6 minutes):

“For your first speech project, you will introduce yourself to your fellow club members and give them some information about your background, interests, and ambitions.”

Most people wouldn’t have a problem with telling their story, but in a September 18, 2015 post titled Narratives - No, you don’t have to tell the one about the wasted investment in law school Jane had said:

“I learned how liberating it was to stop telling ‘my story’ when I relocated from the buttoned-down Northeast Corridor to the whatever Southwest. No one encouraged me to disclose why I had come, what I hoped to accomplish, or how long I planned to stay. The ambiance mirrored the ethos of the Beatles meme Let It Be.”
 

Jane seems to have confused the Toastmasters International program with the quick-and-easy but much more expensive ‘product’ shown above.

The image of a running girl came from the Library of Congress.

UPDATE: June 21, 2016

Jane put two comments on this post on June 19th. One at 2:38 PM was:

“Before exploring Toastmasters, I have been enrolled in several other public speaking training programs. From them I had learned a lot. That included what I found helpful for me and what was not helpful. I did not perceive Toastmasters as providing me what I needed at the time, in the format I needed it.

Toastmasters may be effective for some. It did not seem that it was going to be for me. In the future if I sense I would benefit from public speaking training, I will not try Toastmasters again. ”

The other at 2:41 PM was:

“Since I had benefited from other formal public speaking training programs in the past I knew what would be effective for me and what wouldn't. After three weeks I decided that Toastmasters was not for me.

There is no one way to enhance one's public speaking skills.” 

I never said there was just one way. If she just had looked under the Toastmasters label, she would have found my July 15, 2010 post titled Public speaking training is a journey; You get to choose how to go. I believe that Toastmasters is effective for many or most, not just some.

Then she whined about me in the second part of another June 19th post titled Hilary Clinton Isn’t Such a Hot Public speaker - So? There she mentioned her background with Dale Carnegie public speaking training and said:

“One of my new strengths has been the ability to size up a situation and make the decision whether to stick with it or move on, nicely. That has become a necessity in this volatile economy. Essentially, it's project-based. No longer is it dominated by client accounts which stick with us for years.

Every day I have to decide: Should I accept this account? If it's souring, should I give it more time or provide a sweet cover story and exit? My living depends on the quality of those decisions.
 
I applied that ability to attending Toastmasters. Toastmasters is the well-respected brand for training Everyman in public speaking. At a low cost.
 
After three weeks, I determined nonono.  Not for me. Here is my post on that.

Previously I had been enrolled in myriad Dale Carnegie speaking seminars, including one for sales presentations. Twice I had been selected as a graduate assistant in the Dale Carnegie Systems. Also, as a speechwriter, clients often enroll me in the same public speaking training as their subordinates undergo.
 
So, I was no newbie as to what is effective for me in public speaking training. So, it's puzzling: A Richard Garber censures me on his blog for bailing out after three weeks. He had been in Toastmasters four years. I am happy for him that the training was a useful tool in professional development. But I was also equally surprised he imposed an "ought" on me. Here is the rant he delivers. My my. I have been a naughty girl.

Yes, it has occurred to me: Maybe that seeming absolutism voiced by Garber is the ethos of Toastmasters or, at least some of their members. Maybe that's what sent me toward the exit. The reality is: There is no one path to success. There are many. Most, like Clinton's, are unique.
 
A heartfelt plea: Please please please, the Garbers of the universe. Let us discover our own ways to enhance our strengths. Our living depends on that. Directly.”
 
There is a crucial difference between Dale Carnegie and Toastmasters that pops up instantly when you glance at their web sites. Toastmasters is a dot org - a volunteer-run membership organization based on clubs with (usually) weekly meetings. Dale Carnegie is a dot com - a commercial franchise operation that sells seminars like McDonalds sells hamburgers.

Thinking that she could fine-tune her speaking skills by very briefly attending Toastmasters was a sad delusion that showed her misunderstanding, clearly based on minimal research and planning. 

Could Jane have gotten something useful from being a member of Toastmasters International? Yes, but it would have taken her six-months or more to get there. Tucson is a big enough city to have more than one Advanced Toastmasters club. There she would have found other experienced speakers. But completing the Competent Communication manual is a requirement before joining an Advanced club.

 

Explaining lead in drinking water and the Flint crisis

Where can you find  serious, detailed information about a technical topic like lead in drinking water, and the Flint water crisis? Not in newspaper articles! But, you can when you look at the web sites for technical societies like the American Water Works Association (AWWA) and NACE International, you will find excellent magazine articles. 

AWWA has a topical web page on Lead. The November 2014 issue of their Opflow magazine has an article on pages 27 to 27 titled Developing Corrosion Control for Drinking Water Systems which you can download for free as a .pdf file. The quotation shown above was highlighted in that article.

There also is a detailed 56-page web report dated 2015 on Controlling Lead in Drinking Water from The Water Research Foundation.

On pages 26 to 29 in the June issue of the NACE International engineering magazine, Materials Performance, there is an excellent feature article titled Corrosion Caused Lead-Tainted Water in Flint, Michigan. You can read it on the web under the longer title of The Science Behind It: Corrosion Caused Lead-Tainted Water in Flint, Michigan.       

UPDATE

On October 31, 2016 Materials Performance magazine had another article titled Researchers Examine Corrosion of Lead Water Pipes in Aftermath of Flint.

Poking holes in the competition with a product demonstration of pickup truck beds

Sometimes a demonstration is the best way to get your point across. General Motors recently released this three-minute YouTube video comparing how the  “high-strength military-grade aluminum alloy” bed of a Ford F-150 compared with the steel bed of their Chevrolet Silverado. It is effective because they dropped both very heavy concrete landscaping blocks and empty toolboxes.

The ad campaign was covered by USA Today, Forbes, and Truck YEAH! 

Almost five more months of U. S. presidential election rhetoric

We haven’t even had the respective party conventions yet, but the Clinton - Trump feud is already well underway. Both candidates are seriously flawed, and are at an age where those with more sense and less ambition would instead have considered retirement.

We can look forward to tons of organized dung slinging, including books by jerks like Jerome Corsi and Dick Morris.

Today is Mr. Trump’s 70th birthday, and it is about time for him to quit acting like a petulant, two year old child. I have been amazed by his response to the massacre in Orlando. On June 12th he went right back to his previous clueless Twitter crap:

“Horrific incident in FL. Praying for all the victims & their families. When will this stop? When will we get tough, smart & vigilant?”

“Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don't want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!”

“What has happened in Orlando is just the beginning. Our leadership is weak and ineffective. I called it and asked for the ban. Must be tough.”

Then on June 13th he topped that with an incredible speech that absurdly claimed the Orlando shooter was Afghan born. Actually he was born in New York - just like Trump was.  

The image of a baby was adapted from a January 19, 1881 Puck magazine cover found at the Library of Congress.  

Stamp out fuzzy thinking - really act like a journalist

On April 26th at the Ethos3 blog Gabrielle Reed posted on Why presenters should think like journalists. Her eight headings were to:

1] Focus on details
2] Understand your audience
3] Present timely content
4] Avoid jargon
5] Craft captivating leads
6] Incorporate supporting visuals
7] Embrace a storytelling narrative
8] Complete through research

Under her heading #8, Complete thorough research, she begins by saying that:

“Perhaps the most crucial lesson my journalism studies taught me was the constant pursuit of accuracy in everything you do – from writing an article to participating in an interview and even giving a presentation. Never purposely mislead your audiences. Always conduct enough research to support your insights and utilize reputable sources to increase trust between you and others.”

Did she (or her company) really do that? No, of course not! Her heading #5, Craft captivating leads, opens by claiming:

“The average individual’s attention span has dropped from 12 seconds to 8 in the past decade with the increasing popularity of social media sites and quick reference resources.”

Gabrielle also claimed that in the first paragraph of another post on April 18th titled 5 Ways to increase attention and memory in a presentation.

On April 23rd her boss, Scott Schwertly, blogged about The attack on our attention spans and he similarly claimed:

“The average attention span of today’s employee is 8 seconds. That’s it. 8 seconds.
 
It has dropped a grand whopping 4 seconds (12 to 8 seconds) in the last 15 years.”

Ethos3 seems to be following the dubious claim made by Lewis Carroll in his poem The Hunting of the Snark that:

“What I tell you three times is true.”

Where did they get those numbers? Perhaps it was from a brief article in TIME magazine by Kevin McSpadden posted on May 14, 2015 that was titled You Now Have a Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish and subtitled No longer can we boast about 12 seconds of coherent thought. He claimed to have gotten those numbers out of a report from a study done by Microsoft Corporation. The numbers indeed are in that study, but they didn’t come from research. Instead they were just quoted from a web page at a dubious web site called Statistic Brain. I blogged about that in a January 21st post titled Is the average attention span of a presentation coach almost as short as that of a house fly? (I called them Tooth Fairy Statistics).

The Spring 2015 Microsoft report was titled Attention Spans, and was authored by Alyson Gausby - the Consumer Insights Lead at Microsoft Canada. Those three statistics appeared on page 6 of the 52 page pdf file. You can find a link to that file in an article posted on June 7th at Adweek.com by John Stevens titled Decreasing attention spans and your website, social media strategy that yet again misquotes where those statistics really came from. 

The stamp out image was adapted from a WPA poster at the Library of Congress.