York College professionalism survey shows students don’t realize how important employers think communication skills are

Back on October 21, 2010 the Center for Professional Excellence (CPE) at York College posted a press release with a link to some preliminary results from their 2010 survey on Professionalism in the Workplace. More recently the York College CPE posted the detailed results from their 2010 survey on Professionalism in the Workplace as a 130 page Acrobat .pdf document at the bottom of a web page describing the previous 2009 survey.

In their 2010 survey they asked both 430 employers and 404 students about qualities that best describe a professional, qualities that describe being unprofessional, important qualities in professionalism, and the extent to which those qualities were found in employees. In this post I’m going to highlight some of their results.

Qualities that best describe a professional (page 41) are shown above, ranked in the order of importance chosen by employers (dark green bars). (Click on the chart for a larger, clearer version). Communication skills were most important to them, but only were ranked fifth by students (light green bars). Students thought that interpersonal skills, time management, appearance, and work ethic were more important than communication.
 

Qualities that describe being  unprofessional (page 43) are shown above, again ranked in the order of importance chosen by employers (red bars). Poor work ethic was most important to both them, and by students (pink bars). 17.4% of student mentioned poor grammar/communications skills, while 36.2% of employers did. It was ranked third by employers, but fifth by students.

Nineteen important qualities in professionalism were ranked on a scale from one to five by both employers and students, where 1 means not important and 5 means very important. Results (starting on page 47) are shown above. Employers and students generally provided similar rankings.
 

The  extent to which those same 19 qualities were found in employees also were ranked on a scale from one to five by both employers and students, where 1 means very rare and 5 means very common. Results for employers (starting on page 51) are shown above in dark orange, and compared with the qualities ranked as important, shown in dark blue.  With the lone exception of concern for opportunities for advancement, there was a significant gap between important qualities and the extent to which they were found.   

Results for extent to which qualities were found by students are shown above in light orange, and compared with the qualities ranked as important, shown in light blue. Again, with the lone exception of concern for opportunities for advancement, there was a significant gap between important qualities and the extent to which they were found.  

The York College survey is more complete than the NACE Job Outlook Survey I blogged about almost three months ago, since it includes perceptions by both employers and students.

Selection bias

If you’re a coach or trainer, you likely will encounter many people who are extremely nervous about public speaking, and want to be less nervous. Also, you will encounter non-nervous people who greatly enjoy speaking, and seek to improve from good to great. You will not encounter slightly nervous people, who won’t bother to ask for help. Based on that nonrandom sample from the general population, you may be tempted to incorrectly conclude that most people have a phobia about public speaking. (Only about 10% of U.S. adults have a phobia). Selection bias is a problem for all professionals, and it will distort how you see the world.

When I was a medic in the Air Force Reserve in the early 1970s, we did routine flight physicals, each of which included a 12-lead electrocardiogram (EKG). We used a special die to trim 3” samples from those 12 strip charts, and mounted each set on a self-adhesive form. A wise old man, Dr. Richard V. Lynch, was commander of our clinic at the Greater Pittsburgh Airport.

Each afternoon Colonel Lynch would eagerly pounce on that stack of EKG forms and go through them with a fine-tooth comb. He even replotted them as vectorcardiograms. Occasionally he’d frown, mark one of the forms “apparent extreme bradycardia” and tell us to please rerun it. That meant we’d accidentally flipped the mode lever on the machine one notch too far, and ran it at double speed (50 mm/sec) rather than normal speed (25 mm/sec).

Dr. Lynch also was professor of cardiology at the West Virginia University medical school. He had realized that if a specialist doesn’t do something about it, he mainly will see referrals where another physician first looked at the patient, ran an EKG, and noticed there was something very wrong. His diagnostic skills gradually will deteriorate. He knew the way to avoid that problem was by looking at a sample of healthy people every month. Those flight physicals were his reality check for staying sharp.

Ten outstanding podcasts from the book Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma

Starting last month Nick Morgan did another series of podcasts about public speaking based on his 2009 book Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma. In it he talks about being open, being connected, being passionate, and listening. Here are the links:

July 20th: How to use the power of your unconscious mind (3 minutes)

July 21st: Why you need authenticity and charisma (3 minutes)

July 25th: How to communicate powerfully (5 minutes)

July 27th: Why the debt limit talks are doomed - a rhetorical analysis (6 minutes)

August 1st: Why you need to be open - and how to do it (5 minutes)

August 3rd: How to connect better with the people around you (4 minutes)

August 10th: How to use body language to connect powerfully with other people (7 minutes)

August 15th: Becoming a passionate communicator (5 minutes)

August 17th: Finding passion in your voice and gestures (4 minutes)

August 22nd: In praise of listening (5 minutes)

Listening to the whole series will take less than fifty minutes, and is time well spent. You can look here to find an image of the four spaces discussed in his August 10th podcast.

The image of Jimmy Carter campaigning came from the Library of Congress.

Would you like to order the Type-A steering wheel?

While driving in Boise recently, I was startled to see the irritated driver of the SUV in front of me use the center, left-turn-only lane to pass the car in front of him. That car only was going the marked 30 mile per hour speed limit. The incident got me musing about whether vehicle manufacturers are missing a potentially profitable marketing niche, as follows.

Once upon a time a customer (let’s call him Rupert) was considering ordering a Ferrari. He was discussing various options with his dealer.

Salesman: “Would you like the Type-A or the Type-B steering wheel?”

Rupert: “What does the Type-A wheel look like?”

Salesman: “It has a giant, specially-marked, blue horn button in the middle. The horn keeps on blowing unless you hold the button down.”

Rupert: “What’s the Type-B steering wheel like?”

Salesman: “It’s the one for more normal people!”

Please slow down, and lighten up. (The original image of a steering wheel came from here).

Fear of speaking while black - preliminary results from the NSAL

110 years ago, in Up from Slavery: An Autobiography, Booker T. Washington said that:

“....People often ask me if I feel nervous before speaking, or else they suggest that, since I speak so often, they suppose that I get used to it. In answer to this question I have to say that I always suffer intensely from nervousness before speaking. More than once, just before I was to make an important address, this nervous strain has been so great that I have resolved never again to speak in public. I not only feel nervous before speaking, but after I have finished I usually feel a sense of regret, because it seems to me as if I had left out of my address the main thing and the best thing that I had meant to say.”

Is there any recent information about how a representative sample of African Americans feel about public speaking and other fears? Yes, although it has not yet been analyzed in detail or published in a magazine article. Ten years ago a mental health study called the National Survey of American Life (NSAL) began, led by professor James S. Jackson. The NSAL surveyed a large sample of African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans.  Raw data from the NSAL are posted on the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES) web site. The CPES also includes another study of minorities, the National Latino and Asian American Survey (NLAAS). 

The bar chart shown above ranks eight fears from screening questions in the NSAL - six specific fears SC27A through 27F, SC29A (public speaking) and SC30 (crowds). Point to and click on the chart to see a larger, clearer version. For most questions, about 5890 people in the sample provided yes or no answers. (Only about 3870 answered SC29A). Animals or bugs were feared by the the most people, followed by heights, and giving a speech or speaking in class. 

Another bar chart compares the NSAL results with those for the general US public found in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCSR), which I discussed in a previous post. The two biggest differences between the NSAL and the NCSR results are for giving a speech or speaking in class (the number one fear), and for flying (the number eight fear). In the NCSR 10.2% more feared giving a speech or speaking in class than in the NSAL. Conversely, 8.9% less in the NCSR feared flying than in the NSAL. These comparisons are interesting, but preliminary. Eventually psychologists and psychiatrists  will do more detailed analyses on this subject and data.

There already have been two magazine articles in the Journal of Anxiety Disorders based on data from the NSAL. In 2009 J. A. Himle et al discussed the prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, social anxiety, and post traumatic stress disorder in “Anxiety disorders among African Americans, Blacks of Caribbean Descent and Non-Hispanic Whites in the United States.” In 2011 J. A. Soto et al discussed “The relationship between perceived discrimination and Generalized Anxiety Disorder among African Americans, Afro Caribbeans, and non-Hispanic Whites.” One discussion of this article used the phrase “racial battle fatigue” to describe their results.

When I Googled the phrase “speaking while black” I found that it already had been used by Mayowa Obasaju in the title for her 2007 psychology MA thesis at Georgia State University - Speaking While Black: The Relationship Between African Americans’ Racial Identity, Fear of Confirming Stereotypes, and Public Speaking Anxiety. She studied a sample of 84 undergraduate students - 72 females and 12 males.

The image of Booker T. Washington came from the Library of Congress.

Deja view - counting evidence twice

Wait a minute! Didn’t that horse already cross the finish line?

In citing research to support an argument, it’s not very hard to accidentally count something twice - particularly when we don’t get all the way back to primary sources.

For example in David J. Dempsey’s 2010 book Present Your Way to the Top, at the bottom of page 3 he says that:

“....In a survey that appeared in the Book of Lists, 3,000 people were asked ‘What are you most afraid of?’ and the number-one response was ‘speaking before a group.’ It ranked higher than the fear of heights, insects, and even death (Ref. 2). In another study, 2,500 people were asked to list their greatest fear, and the largest percentage of respondents listed public speaking (Ref. 3).”

His reference 3 was to the 7th edition of Stephen E. Lucas’s book The Art of Public Speaking. I’ve previously blogged about how Lucas referred to the 1973 Bruskin survey, where that data in the Book of Lists originally came from. So, references 2 and 3 actually are to the exact same data.

Stephen J. Senn has described how this same pesky problem occurs in medical science. His article on Overstating the evidence - double counting in meta-analysis and related problems discusses ways to keep from fooling ourselves.

Some criminals deliberately miscount bills when giving change. A folded bill can be put in the front of a stack and counted twice. It then is unfolded as it’s handed back. If you don’t recheck the count you will be shortchanged. Other short change artists fold and hide one bill they got from you, in the back of a stack. Then they say that you made a mistake, and get you to add an extra.   

In war (hot or cold) it’s common to confuse the enemy about your unit strength. Back in high school I remember reading Robert Lee Scott’s book God Is My Co-Pilot about his World War II experiences flying a P-40 from near Kunming, China. He had his propellor spinner repainted when refueling and rearming after each solo sortie, and produced the impression that one plane was a whole squadron.  

In 1955 the Soviet Union flew their ten new Bison bombers past the reviewing stand on Aviation Day. When they got over the horizon they circled back. They made a total of six passes - to give the illusion of sixty bombers and create western fears of a Bomber Gap. 

How to make a large number incomprehensible - or comprehensible

On August 15th Faith Pincus posted about Rhetorical Techniques: Sample Analogy in her Speech Advice blog. She discussed an article in TheWeek that was an extract from Charles Fishman’s recent book The Big Thirst. Her paraphrase was that:

“The United States uses 5.7 billion gallons of water every day, to flush the toilet.  5.7 billion gallons of water every day.  That's a hard number to get your mind around, so what does it mean? It means that the United States flushes the same amount of water every day that the UK and Canada, combined, use for all of their daily household water needs.”

She thought that comparison was great. I think it’s mediocre at best. First, it compares one incomprehensible large number with another. Both are large abstractions without an obvious meaning. Second, the comparison is more than slightly bogus since the population of the UK plus Canada isn’t nearly as large as the U.S. population.

A longer direct quote from the article is that:

“For Americans at home, flushing the toilet is the main way we use water. We use more water flushing toilets than bathing or cooking or washing our dishes or our clothes. The typical American flushes the toilet five times a day at home, and uses 18.5 gallons of water, just for that. What that means is that every day, Americans flush 5.7 billion gallons of clean drinking water down the toilet. And that’s just at home.

It’s impossible to get your brain around that number, of course—5.7 billion gallons of water a day. But here’s a way of thinking about it. It’s more water than all the homes in the United Kingdom and Canada use each day for all their needs—we flush more water down the toilet than 95 million Brits and Canadians use.”

When we divide 5.7 billion by 18.5 we get 308 million, which is about the U.S. population. Our population is over three times that 95 million, so you’d expect that we’d waste more water than them. Also, multiplying anything by 308 million makes it ridiculously large.

Is there another well-known large number we can compare with 5.7 billion gallons per day? Yes - it’s the amount of water going over Niagara Falls. During the summer tourist season that is 100,000 cubic feet per second, which converts to 64.6 billion gallons per day. So, flushing our toilets uses about 9% of what goes over the falls. If you’ve been there or seen it on TV 9% of Niagara Falls is pretty easy to imagine.

Stating the number per person as 18.5 gallons a day from five toilet flushes helps keep it comprehensible. We’re actually getting somewhere in learning to conserve water, but still have room to improve. That’s 3.7 gallons per flush. The toilets currently sold use just 1.6 gallons per flush. Back in the sixties toilets used 5.5 gallons per flush, and in the eighties we got down to 3.5 gallons per flush. We’ve clearly still got a lot of the older ones out there wasting water.