by Susan Johnston | Jul 2, 2005 | Rants, Ramblings and Riddles |
“I just get home and then I leave again.” That’s one of the lines in Diana Krall’s song, Departure Bay. I guess that’s the story of her life. In recent months, it’s the story of mine. I just got back from Washington, DC, and I’m heading off to the UK tonight. The turnaround was shortened because of a thunderstorm that closed Dulles Airport on the eve of the Canada Day/Fourth Of July weekend. I know it’s not very fashionable to say nice things about airlines, but the people at Air Canada were helpful and creative – and up to the challenge of getting me moving again.
So back to the music. Though not in Diana’s league, I’m heading out tonight for a few weeks of singing in Italy. Folks think that’s a bit of a switch from the DC communication conference and its focus on business communication. I don’t see it that way. It’s ALL communication. When you work on a song, the words are important – yet they’re not the whole story. Movement, inflection, pacing, volume, pauses, rhythm all add to the context and help the audience understand the story.
These elements of non-verbal communication are critical in expressing the meaning of your communication. Studies dating back to the 1960s research of Dr. Albert Mehrabian suggest that, particularly when there is an emotional component to the communication, just 7% of a message is conveyed by our words. Tone accounts for 38%. Body language fills in the other 55%.
This is shocking news. If we think about anything in our spoken communication – and that’s not a given – we’ll give thought to our words. The rest just happens.
In the music workshops I’m attending, we spend a lot of energy and time thinking about the 93% of communication that is beyond words. We dig into our emotions – joys, fears, anger, sadness – to mine the nuggets of feeling that will make our characters and our stories come alive in our songs so we can really touch the audience.
As communicators outside the world of music, these techniques help us be better understood, be better at influencing others, and be conveyors of the whole story.
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It’s likely to be three weeks before I’m near a computer again. I’ll have lots of thoughts on my return. In the mean time – the homework is awareness. What IS your body language saying. What DOES your tone convey?
Cheers – Sue
by Susan Johnston | Jun 24, 2005 | Rants, Ramblings and Riddles |
Yesterday, I received an e-mail from a colleague asking for a definition of “business communicator.” As a regional chair for the world’s largest association of business communicators, you’d think I’d have a fast answer for that. But I didn’t.
My first reaction was, “Anyone willing to spend the money to join your chapter. ” But that sounds waaaaaaay too crass. Besides, it’s not creative and it’s not true.
Business communicators, in my view, are people who view themselves as spending a significant amount of on-the-job time communicating in, to, or about business, specifically the businesses that employ them.
I left journalism when I discovered that the employee magazine at the bank that employed my husband had a wider circulation than the glossy consumer publication I was running. A few weeks later, as the new editor of TD’s Bank Notes, my boss took me to a local meeting of the International Association of Business Communicators where I heard a brilliant speech by a very senior communication manager.
She spoke of the importance of our work in helping our businesses be successful. Yawn. She spoke of the importance of our work in helping customers relate to our companies, our products and our services. Ho hum. She spoke of the importance of our work in helping employees understand where they and their work fit into the business so they can find meaning in their work. Yes! At that moment, I became a business communicator. (She also said, “It is not enough to know your craft – you have to know your business.” At that moment, I also became a banker. But that’s another column.)
In the 20 years since that luncheon, my business cards have had a lot of different titles and postal codes. My activities have been even more varied – editing shareholder and employee publications, hosting videos, organizing meetings, holding focus groups, training managers, leading orientation programs, advising executives on major change, introducing new computer systems, facilitating cross-functional team meetings, counselling managers on dealing with a multicultural work force, designing procedures, managing a team of teleworking procedure writers, web development and usability, writing for a business magazine, fundraising for a nonprofit heritage association, developing a leadership competency model, and, now, business and communication coaching. At every point, I have considered myself a business communicator.
Is business communicator something you BE or something you DO? I vote for BE. Regardless of your title, and whether or not you belong to a professional association with “communicator” in its name, you may be a “business communicator.” If you’re consciously and carefully communicating with people about their work, their products, their customers, or the future sustainability of their business, that’s what you are.
by Susan Johnston | Jun 23, 2005 | Rants, Ramblings and Riddles
I awoke this morning to the news that Dave Buck, the CEO of CoachVille, had declared the death of the MBA. http://coachville.blogs.com/thembaisdead/
As a coach, I’m intrigued. As an MBA, I’m amused. As someone whose mug is prominently displayed in a sincere testimonial for Dave’s coaching school, I’m slightly embarrassed. But as a professional communicator, I’m delighted to have a ringside seat.
Dave doesn’t like the way executive coaching has been portrayed in the Harvard Business Review. So he’s slamming all business schools and their graduates, accusing them of not “getting it” – “it” being coaching. PR 101 suggests that telling someone they’re not clued in, their education is second rate, and they’re – um – dead (?) is not a great way to earn their respect, their interest, or their inclination to support your cause.
Using his own 1980s MBA training as the reference point, Dave suggests that someone wanting to make an impact in the business world would be better off at a coaching school (presumably his) than a business school. B-schools, he contends, aren’t equipping executives with ways to bring out the greatness in people. For that, he claims, you need to go to coaching school.
PR 102 suggests that, had he obeyed a fundamental rule of good communication – “Do some research,” our boy might have discovered that what we used to call “soft skills” are embedded in the business curriculums of more than a few business schools.
For example, I have a 21st century MBA (Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC). Leadership, social responsibility and sustainability take their place alongside law, finance, marketing and such. You do half the work in teams, and if you don’t work well with others by the end of your two years, you don’t graduate. To get good marks, you have to learn to bring out the best in others.
It was doing my MBA that I encountered emotional intelligence and appreciative inquiry, fundamental tools in my coaching practice. It was doing the MBA that I also heard about life coaching for the first time. Royal Roads may be west of the Rockies, but it’s not all that “woo woo” to have these elements in a modern-day B-school curriculum.
So what’s my point? You need business skills in business. You need people skills in business. One without the other will get you nowhere fast. Mission, vision, values, destiny, cause, calling and all that wonderful stuff are critical elements in organizational life. However, at some point, you need systems that work, processes people can rely on, financial sustainability, and tangible evidence that the mission is achievable.
Of all the skills we need in organizational life, the most critical is the ability to communicate. It’s only through sharing that ideas can be developed and implemented, that brilliance can be recognized, that visions are made real, and that worker bees, manager bees, executive bees and queen bees know what they need to do – and why.
Perhaps because it isn’t glamourous, face-to-face communication is the forgotten stepchild of the corporate communication profession. But study after study* supports my contention that of all the communication going on in organizations today, the most essential and effective is communication by one person with another.
When it comes to the techniques of interpersonal communication, you’re more likely to learn it at CoachVille than at Harvard. So Dave gets a point for that. But you don’t need to go to school to learn to communicate. With conscious recognition of how and what we’re communicating, each of us can be an excellent communicator – whether we’re an MBA, a coach, a professional communicator, a manager, a wage slave, an executive, or none of the above. Awareness is always the beginning.
* I’ll have more to share about the research that shows the importance face-to-face communication in organizations next week, when I’ll be reporting from the annual conference of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC).
