The Meaning of Meetings

Most of us, at some point in our professional lives, have come across at least one book or article or workshop on how to conduct a meeting. One example is the "Meeting Bill of Rights," proposed by Dru Scott in her book How to Put More Time in Your Life. The "Meeting Bill of Rights" affirms that everyone involved in a meeting is entitled to know in advance (1) the meeting objective, (2) what question the meeting should answer, (3) what each participant is expected to contribute, and (4) what time the meeting will be over.

Although other sources may go into more detail on these points, Scott's work exemplifies the focus of most of what has been written and taught about meetings. This focus is a "how" orientation: how meetings should be conducted.

But relatively little has been said concerning why meetings are conducted in the first place. Why do mature, mentally healthy human beings spend so much time getting together in what are frequently poorly ventilated (and/or poorly heated) smoke-filled rooms? What purpose is fulfill when we schedule hours of our time in an activity that few of us understand and most of us say we don't like?

People in organizations hold a lot of meetings. The average white-collar worker will spend approximately thirty thousand hours in meetings during his or her working career. Depending on how you calculate it, this figure represents from one-third to almost one-half of all the working hours for such a person.

Meetings, therefore, appear to have a very high priority in the lives of many people. I noted earlier that it is human nature to rebel against meaningless activity. If we are forced into such activity, we feel "slightly crazy." Is this, maybe, why meetings bother us so much? Do meetings make any sense? Do meetings have any meaning, and if so, what is it?

In this chapter, I would like to suggest first why meetings are such a fact of organizational life.

Then I shall point out two very important organizational values that are served by meetings. Finally, at the end of the chapter, I shall offer a few comments on how we can shape our meetings so that they better serve these values. U-standing the "why" of meetings, maybe we'll feel less crazy when we find ourselves in one.

THE "WHY" OF MEETINGS

Meetings fulfill a deep human need. George Kelly, John Dewey, Martin Buber, and other noted commentators on the human condition have all observed that face-to-face meetings hold together the world of human reality. Together, people construct language, value systems, and codes of behavior that define "the world."

The reality of any organization is constructed and validated by its individual members. Coming together, these members define goals, affirm values, and establish, as well as reinforce, systems of behavior.

In other words, meetings provide an opportunity for the formation of community. Community serves to unite the values and goals of the individuals with each other and with those of the organization. If there were no meetings in the place where I work, few, if any, community would not form, and my attachment to my place of work would diminish.

Meetings, and the opportunity they provide for the building of community, are especially important where work is focused around what political theorist Langdon Winner calls "information machines." The American workplace is changing from primarily product-oriented companies to information-oriented institutions. Currently, 85 percent of all jobs in America involve some form of information processing.

As we spend more of our time with information machines, the danger arises that we shall spend less time with each other. As Winner observes, "Developments like electronic news, education, banking and even work, all available through information machines, create a strong impetus for people to dwell within themselves and not reach out."

Yet members of an organization need to reach out and interact if they are going to construct the commonly supported values, goals, and structures that will define their place of work as a reality for them. Without such interaction, the organization is only "virtual" in the minds of its employees, a fiction with little claim to productivity or loyalty.

Most of us are aware of the need for human interaction in the workplace. This need is most acute in workplaces dominated by information machines. I find it no accident that most of the complaints I receive about "too many meetings" come from persons working in "high-tech" or "information" industries.

Workers on the assembly line or at the construction site, even on the department-store floor, don't seem to call as many meetings. They don't need to schedule formal opportunities to interact. Their workday is filled interaction. One might say (as some supervisors wryly do) that in these settings, the workday is, in fact, one big meeting!

But for employees in high-tech, the bulk of their work activities involve interaction with machines, not people. Over time, working ''alone'' can create the illusion that I work in an isolated, self-contained world. My conception of "the organization" becomes paler and paler. My connection to the organization becomes weaker and weaker .

At some level, managers sense the need for interaction among work-team members. And so they address this need in the only way they know how. They call meetings.

A good example of this syndrome came to my attention when I was conducting an organizational assessment for a division of a major computer firm several years ago. The focus of this division was on planning, finance, and research. Thus, virtually every employee had a computer terminal at his or her workstation. E-mail, on-line data bases, facsimile devices, and "superphones" all combined to make this facility a wonder of the information age.

The assessment design called for the interviewing of thirty middle-and upper-level managers. From these interviews, as well as other measures subsequently administered, a strong and overriding theme emerged. You guessed it. Too many meetings.

Meetings accounted for nearly 60 percent of the managers' on-site time. Their primary concern, therefore, was not the quality of the meeting, that is, how effectively they were run. Their problem concern was the sheer quantity of meetings. As one participant quipped, "It's hard to juggle the time in meetings with the time to do the stuff that's decided in meetings, if anything."

Now it's interesting to note that in most cases of "excessive meetings," the very same people who are complaining about the number of meetings are also the people who are calling meetings. So it was in this case. Upon exploring the "why" of the meetings, nearly every participant discovered that the usual reason he or she called a meeting was to get "buy in."

Buy in was used in this firm to describe the process of getting as many people as possible involved in every decision. A high value was placed on "buy in" in this division. When we explored the "why" of this value priority, we found that many staff members were very concerned that, given the intrinsically isolated nature of their jobs, they could easily fall into making completely unilateral decisions. Unilateral decisions troubled the managers not only because such decisions would probably be based on too narrow a body of information but also because unilateral decisions carried unilateral responsibility if the decisions went wrong.

Moreover, by calling meetings, ostensibly for "buy in," people got a chance to chat with their colleagues and find out what was going on. They couldn't do this poring over data at their workstations, and the culture of the firm frowned on drop-in office visits.

So the problem of excessive meetings masked two other, more fundamental, problems: (1) managers' reluctance to take responsibility for unilateral decisions and (2) everyone's need to get together. By bringing the work team's values to the surface, we also developed ways to address these problems. First, the awesome telecommunications equipment at their disposal could be used to get "buy in" on decisions without calling a meeting. In fact, sending requests for comments and suggestions over the terminals gave the recipients of those requests more time to reflect on the response. This, in turn, would provide a higher level of feedback than ideas thought up on the spur of the moment at a meeting.

But what about the need to "get together"? Well, the suggestion arose to schedule monthly staff birthday parties and seasonal department or sectionwide lunches as a way to get together. The groups had never had time for such "social amenities" before: they were too busy going to meetings.

Finally, division members acknowledged that some decisions were most efficiently made unilaterally, on their own. They dealt with the need to take individual responsibility in some cases and to avoid dumping on a person if things went wrong.

WEDDING THE VALUES OF ACTION AND RELATING

Action and relating are two values essential to organizational effectiveness. Every organization must get things done-hopefully, things that support its values and goals. In addition, every organization must provide opportunities for its members to relate to one another. Through these relationships, common meanings, understandings, and systems are constructed that define and validate the reality of the organization for its members.

Both the god of action and the goddess of relating are served by meetings. Meetings give us an opportunity to get things done and interact all at the same time. Unfortunately, this wedded pair is almost always battling. At any given meeting, the action faction angrily tries to get things going while the relating coalition stubbornly holds to getting people (or at least their ideas and values) together.

The opposing goals of "hanging out" versus "getting on with it" are in almost constant contention for ascendancy at meetings. However, I would like to suggest that good meetings, like good marriages, are achieved by maintaining a balance, a unity of these opposites.

In this unity, each partner maintains the distinctive attributes that are his or her strong points, at the same time melding with the strong points of the other for the greater enhancement of both. The god of action is goal-oriented. When he is in a balanced state, he contributes the very desirable quality of decisiveness to meetings. The goddess of relating is process-oriented. When she is in a balanced state, she contributes the very desirable quality of sensitivity to meetings. Thus, when the couple is in harmony, a meeting flows smoothly, with decisiveness and sensitivity. A wonderful experience.

However, when either action or relating pushes for ascendancy (that is, pushes to take over the meeting), it also pushes the pair into imbalance. And the experience of the meeting, like the experience of being privy to any marital dispute, is uncomfortable, to say the least. When the god of action takes over in a meeting, people feel bulldozed. Decisions get pushed to premature closure. Participants become resentful, distant, and resistant to implementing any solutions that get "agreed" upon.

On the other hand, when the goddess of relating takes over a meeting, people feel bored. Discussions dwell on feelings, attitudes, and beliefs. Few decisions are made. Participants feel aimless and frustrated.

What steps, then, can we take to keep action and relating in harmony and avoid imbalances in our meetings?

SOME MARRIAGE COUNSELING FOR MEETINGS

The best way to balance the god of action when he gets out of hand is to structure meetings for effective relating. And the best way to balance the goddess of relating when she gets out of hand is to structure meetings for effective action.

First, to structure a meeting for effective relating:

1. Draw out the silent members of the group. Ask for their opinions, not facts. Asking for facts may simply put them on the spot.

2. Control the garrulous. When someone rambles on, pick up a phrase he or she utters as an excuse for cutting in and offer the phrase to someone else with a "What are your thoughts on that?"

3. Protect the weak. Commend contributions from junior members of the team.

4. Encourage the clash of ideas. (But discourage The clash of personalities.)

5. Avoid the "suggestion-squashing" reflex. One problem with suggestions in meetings is that they are easier to ridicule than facts or opinions. So take special note and show special warmth when anyone makes a suggestion. Pick out the best parts of suggestions and get other members to help build them into some-thing that might work. Finally, if another member of the meeting shows the squashing reflex, ask the squasher to produce a better suggestion,

Second, to structure a meeting for effective action:

1. Appoint a timekeeper to clearly announce when the meeting time is one-half elapsed, three-quarters elapsed, and five minutes from its scheduled ending time.

2. Clearly state the purpose of the meeting at its start. Meetings are held for the following purposes:

• Decision making

• Recommendations

• Preliminary deliberations

• Approval

• Information sharing



3. At the close of the meeting, make a summary statement of what was agreed upon. Have this statement appear in the minutes. Include the names of persons responsible for future action.

4. Conduct a two-week experiment in "meeting control andcost reduction":
• Reduce all meetings to one-half their normally scheduled time.

• Prohibit the scheduling of back-to-back meetings. Everyone must have at least thirty minutes between meetings.

• Allow anyone who wishes to leave a meeting to do so, without penalty, when the timekeeper announces that the scheduled time for the meeting's end has arrived.

• Institute the "ten-minute meeting." Hold it in an area with no chairs. Permit no smoking, drinking, or eating.

At the end of the experiment, you may have reshaped the course of your department's over-relating, underacting meeting behavior. You may also have gotten a lot of people riled up. But as Susan Streeker commented in her article "No more mad meetings," . . . "It's time to rethink the way time, space and money are being sacrificed on the altar of the conference table."
THE MAIN POINT

Meetings can be successfully organized by focusing first, not on how to run the meeting, but rather on why we are calling the meeting in the first place. Meetings are of importance to organizations because they support the value of action ("getting things done") and the value of relating ("getting together and getting things understood"). The effective meeting is a happy marriage of the two.


http://www.wisdomforwork.com/site/page/pg1357-pn_What_Meetings_Mean.html

Coping with the Interview

You're about to interview for that job you really, really want. And you are a wreck. You know that was another candidate you just passed in the parking lot, the fellow with the Armani suit and smug smile... And that woman sitting across from you in the reception area:, so calm, so collected, makeup impeccable, no moisture drizzling down the back of her neck: bet she's a candidate, too. All of these people, after your dream job! And they all seem so confident!

Friend, you've got your eye on the hole, not the doughnut. Who cares how many other candidates there are? Who cares whether other people never break a sweat over interviews? What's important is that one person is going to get the job, one person is going to get the brass ring (or the glazed cruller as the case may be) and that person needs to be you.

This will never happen as long as you approach interviewing as a stressful ordeal. "Successful interviewees," states Jose Luis Garcia, Ph.D., Director of Management Development for Sports Authority, "convey, in no uncertain terms, confidence in themselves." I am willing to bet that, when you walk into an interviewer's office, nervousness hangs over you like a fog.

Now tell me this: how do you feel when you're around a nervous person? Start to feel a little jittery yourself, right? Well, that's probably what you're doing to interviewers. And when that happens, they write you off.

You've got to get to the point where you walk into interviews confident, positive and enthusiastic, where interviewing is a fun game and you're going in to win. Here's how you can start training:

View your next interview as practice.
One interview is not enough time to turn your behavior around. So decide it's OK if you don't get the next one. See this interview simply as a practice session. This attitude alone will help you calm down.

Write an affirmation.
"I am confident and successful in interviews." Write it on a card that will fit into your pocket. Stick it on your bathroom mirror, refrigerator door. Read it out loud, three times in succession, six times a day for the next three weeks. Remember, you're in training.

Practice talking short.
Studies reveal that interviewees who listen as much as they speak have a greater probability of getting hired. When you're nervous, you probably babble. Babbling in an interview is not good. So, for a week before the interview, practice speaking with friends in short phrases, no longer than 2 minutes in length. Get comfortable waiting quietly while they figure out their response.

Prepare (and practice!) answers for questions that make you anxious, such as:

1. "Reason for leaving". Choose a response that is CALM:
Challenge ("I couldn't grow professionally in that position."),
Advancement ("Freeze on promotions, others with more seniority."),
Location ("Department relocating, the commute now prohibitive."),
Money ("My skills and contributions have increased, pay has not.")

2. "Tell me about yourself".
Remember the short talk rule. State a job-related, desirable attribute. Give an example of how you used it to make a contribution: "I'm a quick study. I came up with a perfect design two hours after a customer made an emergency request."

On the day of the interview, arrive no more than 15 minutes early. You'll have enough time to acclimate yourself, go to the rest room and repeat your affirmation, but not enough time to work yourself into a tizzy.

Contact: The First Four Minutes (Leonard & Natalie Zunin) tells us that our impressions of one another are formed within the first four minutes of an encounter. To make a good first impression when you meet the interviewer, smile, shake hands firmly (but no death grips), make eye contact, say hello using his or her name, sit down, smile and keep quiet.

Let the interviewer be in control. Wait for a question. The first question may simply be "Any trouble finding the parking lot?" But remember, the person who asks the question controls the interaction. (Think of 2 year olds).

I'd love to know how things work out. If these tips help you land your next job, send me some doughnuts. I am partial to glazed.


http://www.wisdomforwork.com/site/page/pg1361.html

What to do in college to be successful in your career

For those of you about to start another year at school, here’s a list of things to keep in mind: Twenty things to do in college to set yourself up for a great job when you graduate.

1. Get out of the library.
“You can have a degree and a huge GPA and not be ready for the workplace. A student should plan that college is four years of experience rather than 120 credits,” says William Coplin, professor at Syracuse University and author of the book, 10 Things Employers Want You to Learn in College. Many people recommend not hiring someone with a 4.0 because that student probably has little experience beyond schoolwork.

2. Start a business in your dorm room.
It’s relatively easy, and Google and Yahoo are dying to buy your business early, when it’s cheap. Besides, running a company in your room is better than washing dishes in the cafeteria. Note to those who play poker online until 4am: Gambling isn’t a business. It’s an addiction.

3. Don’t take on debt that is too limiting.
This is not a reference to online gambling, although it could be. This is about choosing a state school over a pricey private school. Almost everyone agrees you can get a great education at an inexpensive school. So in many cases the debt from a private school is more career-limiting than the lack of brand name on your diploma.

4. Get involved on campus.
When it comes to career success, emotional intelligence – social skills to read and lead others –get you farther than knowledge or job competence, according to Tiziana Casciaro, professor at Harvard Business School. Julie Albert, a junior at Brandeis University, is the director of her a-cappella group and head of orientation this year. She hones her leadership skills outside the classroom, which is exactly the place to do it.

5. Avoid grad school in the humanities.
Survival rates in this field are very close to survival rates on the Titanic. One in five English PhD’s find stable university jobs, and the degree won’t help outside the university: “Schooling only gives you the capacity to stand behind a cash register,” says Thomas Benton, a columnist at the Chronicle of Higher Education (who has a degree in American Civilization from Harvard and a tenured teaching job.)

6. Skip the law-school track.
Lawyers are the most depressed of all professionals. Stress in itself does not make a job bad, says Alan Krueger, economist at Princeton University. Not having control over one’s work does make a bad job, though, and lawyers are always acting on behalf of someone else. Suicide is the leading cause of premature death among lawyers. (Evan Shaeffer has a great post on this topic.)

7. Play a sport in college.
People who play sports earn more money than couch potatoes, and women executives who played sports attribute much of their career success to their athletic experience, says Jennifer Cripsen, of Sweet Briar College. You don’t need to be great at sports, you just need to be part of a team.

8. Separate your expectations from those of your parents.
“Otherwise you wake up and realize you’re not living your own life,” says Alexandra Robbins, author of the popular new book The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids. (Note to parents: If you cringe as you read this list then you need to read this book.)

9. Try new things that you’re not good at.
“Ditch the superstar mentality that if you don’t reach the top, president, A+, editor in chief, then the efforts were worthless. It’s important to learn to enjoy things without getting recognition,” says Robbins.

10. Define success for yourself.
“Society defines success very narrowly. Rather than defining success as financial gain or accolades, define it in terms of individual interests and personal happiness,” says Robbins.

11. Make your job search a top priority.
A job does not fall in your lap, you have to chase it. Especially a good one. It’s a job to look for a job. Stay organized by using Excel spreadsheets or online tools to track your progress. And plan early. Goldman Sachs, for example, starts their information sessions in September.

12. Take a course in happiness.
Happiness studies is revolutionizing how we think of psychology, economics, and sociology. How to be happy is a science that 150 schools in the country teach. Preview: Learn to be more optimistic. This class will show you how.

13. Take an acting course.
The best actors are actually being their most authentic selves, says Lindy Amos, of communications coaching firm TAI Resources. Amos teaches executives to communicate authentically so that people will listen and feel connected. You need to learn to do this, too, and you may as well start in college.

14. Learn to give a compliment.
The best compliments are specific, so “good job” is not good, writes Lisa Laskow Lahey, psychologist at Harvard and co-author of How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work. Practice on your professors. If you give a good compliment the recipient will think you’re smarter: Big payoff in college, but bigger payoff in the work world.

15. Use the career center.
These people are experts at positioning you in the workforce and their only job is to get you a job. How can you not love this place? If you find yourself thinking the people at your college’s career center are idiots, it’s probably a sign that you really, really don’t know what you’re doing.

16. Develop a strong sense of self by dissing colleges that reject you.
Happy people have “a more durable sense of self and aren’t as buffeted by outside events,” writes Sonja Lyubomirsky of the University of California-Riverside. When bad things happen, don’t take it personally. This is how the most successful business people bounce back quickly from setback.

17. Apply to Harvard as a transfer student.
Sure people have wild success after going to an Ivy League school but this success is no more grand than that of the people who applied and got rejected. People who apply to Ivy League schools seem to have similar high-self-confidence and ambition, even if they don’t get in, according to research by Krueger.

18. Get rid of your perfectionist streak.
It is rewarded in college, but it leads to insane job stress, and an inability to feel satisfied with your work. And for all of you still stuck on #6 about ditching the law school applications: The Utah Bar Journal says that lawyers are disproportionately perfectionists.

19. Work you way through college.
Getting involved in student organizations counts, and so does feeding children in Sierra Leone or sweeping floors in the chemistry building. Each experience you have can grow into something bigger. Albert was an orientation leader last year, and she turned that experience into a full-time summer job that morphed into a position managing 130 orientation leaders. A great bullet on the resume for a junior in college.

20. Make to do lists.
You can’t achieve dreams if you don’t have a plan to get there.


http://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2006/09/03/what-to-do-in-college-to-be-successful-in-your-career/

Communication
5 Communication Skills Every Business Owner Needs
By Dianna Booher, CSP
Nov 3, 2003 - 2:27:00 PM


Skill #1: Speaking

No longer is effective speaking a “plus” in the business world—it is now expected. And the higher one goes in a company, the more crucial this skill becomes. Today, public speaking is the norm for senior executives.

However, even if you are not a senior executive explaining a crisis to a group of line managers or investors, you often will find yourself speaking before peers in your day-to-day responsibilities. And as a small business owner, you may speak for a living; that is, you may talk to customers and clients daily to sell your products or services. Your speaking success relates directly to your bottom-line.

We all know that it is not necessarily the brightest or most capable who get ahead. Often it is those who make a strong impact on people who end up in positions to buy from them. People who speak well generally are considered more intelligent, forceful, and respectable than their quieter counterparts.

Outside the business world, you will continue to find chances to put your speaking skills to use—at club fund-raisers, on political issues, at farewell gatherings for departing colleagues and friends, and on behalf of nonprofit organizations and causes.

Speaking well is no longer just a nice-to-have skill—it is a must for the successful individual and particularly for the successful business owner.

Skill #2: Listening

Listening means the difference between making or losing a sale, gaining or losing a client, motivating or discouraging a team, mending or destroying an employee relationship. Not a passive state of mind, listening is the precursor to all successful business activity as an owner and manager. As Plutarch observed: “Know how to listen, and you will profit even from those who talk badly.”

Skill #3: Writing

Everything official sooner or later gets written down. Unfortunately, to the small business owner most of the difficult writing—or at least reviewing of others’ drafts–– ends up on your desk: Large customer proposals. Important supplier agreements. Strategic partnerships. Policy statements. Press releases to the public. Letters to investors. What you say is what you get. It has to be clear, concise, correct.

Skill #4: Leading a Meeting

Meetings can bring the world to peace—or kill 15 hours a week for even the best time manager. Business owners meet with clients to sign the big contract, meet with suppliers to negotiate better terms, brainstorm with the own teams to set strategy for the quarter or year, and lead staff meetings to tackle day-to-day issues. How well they lead determines who follows and what they achieve—time wasted or valuable outcomes.

Skill #5: Resolving Conflict

Business owners, unfortunately, have plenty of conflict. If not with clients, then among internal teams. If not with internal teams, then with the governmental agencies and regulators. If not with agencies and regulators, then with warring divisions and stakeholders about expectations and means to the desired outcomes. As business owner, you serve as referee, replete with all the boo’s, minus the benefits.

Finding your toolkit short of any of these skills can hinder your overall effectiveness to achieve results and reach your business goals. To improve results on all fronts, sharpen these skills in your own tool chest and then begin to improve this same skill set in your key employees.


Diana Booher, CSP

Copyright By Dianna Booher, CEO of Booher Consultants, a communication training firm offering workshops in oral presentations and technical writing, and an author of 40 books. Tips excerpted from Speak with Confidence: Powerful Presentations That Inform, Inspire, and Persuade (McGraw-Hill, 2003). For information on her training workshops call 352-438-0261 or DiannaBooher@expertspeaker.com or www.ExpertSpeaker.com

Feedback Be sure to include the article title in your comments.

© Copyright 2001 ExpertMagazine.com

From ExpertMagazine.com

Presentation Skills
A Good Speech is Like a Good Relationship - 20 Tips for Presentation Success!
By Mariah Burton Nelson
Jul 19, 2002 - 1:56:00 PM


Mostly, you've got to care about your subject and care about the audience

Contrary to what many people think, a speech is not a performance. Rather, it's a relationship -- ideally a meaningful one -- that you create with a group of people. Like any good relationship, a speech requires caring, trust, openness, accessibility, and two-way communication.

If you already know how to be a good friend, that's a great start. Here are 20 tips to help you transfer your people skills to the platform:
1. Clarify the expectations. Who asked you to speak? What does that person expect? Ask direct questions beforehand, such as, "What do you hope I'll talk about? What problems or concerns might I address?"

2. Speak from the heart -- and the head. Choose a topic that you a) care about and b) know about. If you can't establish expertise, they won't believe you. If you don't care about the topic, they won't care either.

3. Plan before you speak. Practice the speech, using an outline, to get a sense of timing and phrasing - and to help you feel prepared, which will do wonders for stage fright. Take the outline to the platform with you, if you want (I do this as a security blanket, even when I don't need it) but do not memorize or read the speech word for word. People want you to relate to them, not read or recite from memory.

4. Dress appropriately. Wear an outfit that is slightly nicer than what you expect the audience to be wearing; you're the guest of honor. But keep it simple; don't distract them with sequins or swooping scarves or noisy jewelry.

5. Be prompt. When giving a speech, "arrive early and stay late" is a good motto. (I learned that from professional speaker Lynne Waymon.) By arriving early, you'll have a chance to check out the microphone, seating, lighting, heating, and stage before the audience enters, and deal with any problems (there usually are some). By staying late, you'll make yourself available to audience members who want to talk with you afterward.

6. Be gracious and friendly. Greet at least some of the audience members when they walk in the door, as if you're hosting a party. Shake hands. Make them feel welcome. Not only do audience members appreciate it ("Oh, you're the speaker! Wow!"), it can make you feel more relaxed.

7. Take the time to get to know your audience. Some of this can happen in advance, by asking the meeting planner about the attendees. You can also interview audience members informally when socializing before the speech, and you can poll them once you take the platform. ("How many of you have been to Alaska?") Don't ask obvious questions ("How many of you would like to be successful?"); use your questions to learn relevant information about them, and listen to the answers. Later, you can refer back to this information: "As all of you zookeepers/swimmers/Madonna fans know..."). They'll feel listened to and understood.

8. Put them at ease, literally. Straight rows of chairs are deadly. When an audience member has to turn her head to see the speaker, she'll feel neck strain and eventually even get angry. Request curved seating ahead of time, but move chairs yourself if you must. Or, if that won't work, ask audience members to stand and move their chairs themselves. Tell them you want them to be comfortable. They'll appreciate it.

9. Communicate clearly. Choose one main point. Professional speaker Vanna Novak calls this a "key overriding message." Have you noticed how many speeches lack this essential structural umbrella -- and leave listeners feeling lost and frustrated? No matter how much time is allotted, there will not be enough time to share all your ideas, insights, wisdom, experience, and humor, so you have to decide: What, exactly, do you want people to remember? Share your key overriding message at the beginning, middle, and end of the speech.

10. Be organized. Choose 3 to 5 minor points that support your key overriding message. Avoid the temptation to make this a list of 12 or 17. People can't remember everything you say, and will appreciate you for limiting your speech to three to five main points, each one illustrated with stories, facts, humor, and audience involvement.

11. Speak intentionally. Speak a little more slowly than you normally do. Emphasize certain words. Pause when appropriate. A conversational tone is good, but vocal variety -- volume, pacing -- is also good.

12. Gesture naturally. Or, if it's a big room, gesture a little bigger than you naturally would.

13. Be original. Do not tell jokes from joke books or the internet. Do not use other speakers' material. The audience wants to develop a relationship with YOU: based on your unique experience, insight, wisdom.

14. Involve the audience. Refer to a few audience members by name. Or invite someone up on stage to demonstrate a point. (During my speeches about goal-setting and success, I ask someone to come on stage and share a recent victory.) Ask them their opinion. Find simple, non-threatening ways to get them to get them involved. Ask them to think, imagine, remember, raise their hands, look at each other, or take notes. The more involved they are, the more likely they are to enjoy your presentation -- and feel connected to you.

15. Make eye contact. Maintain eye contact with one person for a whole sentence at a time, before moving on.

16. Get personal. Tell relevant personal stories that illustrate your message -- and reveal something of your humanity. As in any relationship, self-disclosure will build trust.

17. Get close. Walk out from behind the lectern. This one action will make a tremendous impression, since it will bring you physically closer, dispense with the lectern "shield," and differentiate you from most speakers. Retreating to the lectern periodically to look at notes is fine, but you'll notice a remarkable increase in the audience's interest level the moment you leave the lectern behind. Walk all the way into the audience if you want, but don't stay there long, since you don't want to lose eye contact with the people in the first rows.

18. Be lighthearted. Even if you're not spontaneously witty, you can add humor to a speech by planning ahead to share stories (relevant, inoffensive ones) that you've practiced on friends. Humor will relax the audience and make you popular; everyone loves to laugh. Deliver the punch line deliberately, to one person who has laughed before or seems ready to laugh. Since laughter is contagious, their laughter will encourage others to do the same. If no one laughs, don't worry about it; just move on.

19. Send thank-you notes. When you speak, you're not only creating a relationship with your audience, you're creating a relationship with the person who invited you to speak. Sending a thank-you note will be appreciated -- and will increase your chances of being invited back.

20. Learn from the experience. Like any relationship, a relationship with an audience can teach you a lot about yourself: your strengths, weaknesses, hopes, dreams. Did the experience challenge and excite you? That's a good sign; you might want to attend meetings of your local chapter of the National Speakers Association (Nsaspeaker.org) to learn more. Did you make mistakes? Fine. Perfection is impossible. Take a few notes on the process afterward, continue to practice your people/speaking skills, and you'll create increasingly rewarding relationships with your audiences over time.


Mariah Burton Nelson

Mariah Burton Nelson, a former professional basketball player and author of four books, has been speaking professionally about leadership, goal-setting, teamwork, and success since 1987. For information on her presentations call 352-438-0261 or Mariah@ExpertSpeaker.com or www.ExpertSpeaker.com