Here is a guest post on communication during conferences. Hope you like it.

 

How to Hold Your Own During A Conference

 

In the fast-paced world of business, every meeting is an important meeting.  Mobile applications and web conferencing makes any location a suitable location for a business meeting, and true success comes from being able to transition seamlessly from one environment to the next.  All the practice and preparation won't change the fact that how well you engage your peers is more important than the content of your presentation, or the polish of your pitch. 

 

Surviving the On-The-Spot Skype Interview

 

Holding your own in a conference boils down to holding your own in a conversation.  This means being able to act natural, confident, and relaxed while still focusing on the topic of the meeting.  More often than not, speaking comfortably and confidently comes from speaking with others – often. 

 

Conversing with others sounds easy enough – on the surface – but it doesn't always provide ample preparation for discussing detail-heavy business topics with the appropriate level of poise.  Scripted role-play may be okay for some training situations, but what about those times when an unanticipated question comes up? That's where simulation training comes in.

 

Practice Makes Perfect

• Keep Cool – Practicing the art of dialogue and etiquette will result in a sense of confidence and poise which will help you keep a clear head in even the tensest of business meetings.  Great leaders are often marked by their ability to remain unflappable even when under fire, they weren't born that way, they practiced it until it looked easy. 
• Anticipate Curve-balls – Today's job market is increasingly competitive, getting a job means standing out from the crowd. Most interviewers have not only mastered keeping a straight face and unreadable body language, but also delight in asking insightful questions which force you to shift mental gears quickly.
• Organize Coherent Thoughts – Being heard and appreciated as part of the business team means being able to comprehend what your cohorts are saying while also preparing a coherent response. Practicing active listening allows you to touch upon the important points others have raised while also providing a resolution of your own. 

 

To keep up with the break-neck pace of today's high-tech business world, it's important to remain in step with the latest in business innovations.  Learning how to hold your own in a conference is just like learning a foreign language, which is why simulation training is so important for anyone wanting to maintain a competitive edge.

 

SimSource Inc. is a communication company that provides performance-based training and assessment services. Their mission is to provide customized actor-based training, assessment and consultation for a variety of industries such as health care providers, human resources, and law school. For more information visit www.simsourceinc.com.

Persuasion, Persuasion, Persuasion

 

 

The current issue of Harvard Business Review (July/August, 2013) is devoted to “Influence: How to get it, How to use it.” One of the best articles is an interview with persuasion expert, psychologist Robert Cialdini who offers six principles of persuasion (as he has in his other excellent works, Influence: Science and Practice and Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive, with Noah Goldstein and Steve Martin):

1.      Liking. You’ll be more persuasive if people like you.

2.      Reciprocity: If you help others, they will help you.

3.      Social Proof: If you tell people that others are doing what you want them to do, they’ll be more apt to do it as well.

4.      Commitment and consistency: If you get people to make a commitment, they will try to follow through.

5.      Authority: People are persuaded by experts even though they may deny it.

6.      Scarcity: People place a high value on items that are scarce.

Other useful articles emphasize the importance of communicating warmth if you want to influence others and the ways in which experts gain influence.

Gay Pride and the Spiral of Silence

Yesterday, I attended the 44^th NYC Gay Pride Parade. Standing on 14^th Street and Fifth Avenue and scanning the thousands and thousands of marchers and side-line well-wishers, many waving the rainbow flag, I was reminded of an incident from a long time ago when I had the pleasure of having dinner with, among others, John Paul Hudson (1929-2002). John was a gay activist (at a time when there were very few) and out gay writer (at a time when there were even fewer).

John was one of the main organizers of the first New York City gay pride parade in June 28, 1970, one year after the Stonewall Riots in which GLBT people fought off the police on their usual mission of harassment (June 28, 1969).  And so it was especially nice to see members of the New York City Police Department and Goal (Gay Officers Action League) marching in the 2013 parade—as they have for many years.

But, the incident that stands out in my mind was a story John told about a book he wrote. Writing under the name of John Francis Hunter, he wrote a book called The Gay Insider. It was a guide to gay New York City. As I recall, John had a disagreement with his publisher and tried to prevent the book from being sold. I don’t recall the circumstances (or even if John mentioned them) but I remember that his publisher counter-argued that it should be allowed to sell the book since it already had orders for 600 copies that it promised to fill. When the judge in the case heard the publisher say it had orders for 600, his response was: “600? You mean there are 600 of them?”

The other thing this brings to mind is the spiral of silence theory, a theory postulating that people will voice opinions they think the majority hold and be silent on voicing minority opinions, opinions to which the majority would object. Before voicing opinions, people estimate the likelihood of positive and negative response. Opinions that are likely to get a positive response are voiced and opinions that are likely to get a negative response go unspoken.

In the 60s and 70s the demand for gay rights, for equality, for an end to harassment, for an end to job discrimination, and a lot more, was definitely a minority opinion and so the voice remained relatively silent, save for a few brave souls like John. Majority opinion was that being gay was a psychological disorder, a sin, and much worse. And this majority opinion grew, at least for a time. Gradually, however, more and more people (though still in the minority) spoke out. And, they spoke out loudly enough and continued to speak out even to the point of being heard and responded to by the Supreme Court.

And today, the day after some of the largest and most well attended gay pride parades throughout the country, I’m pleasantly reminded that speaking out for justice and truth—even when in the minority—eventually pays off.

 

 

Textbook Changes

You may have noticed (or will soon notice) a number of changes in your textbooks and I thought I’d note some of these here.

1.      Quotations that often introduce our chapters or that appear in margins will be a thing of the past unless they’re very old; contemporary quotations will be gone. The reason: permission problems. The same is true of quotations from research studies that occur within the basal text.

2.      Research instruments that have been so common in our basic texts for illustrating the concepts and also for introducing the nature of research (and something that I like to take credit for introducing into our basic texts, tho’ I may be wrong here) will be gone. Again, the reason is permission problems, especially the difficulty/impossibility of getting digital rights. NCA journals, for example, will be off limits. You’re likely to see “adapted from” as a way around these restriction but that approach is not likely to prove effective in the long run.

3.      References to other chapters in the text are likely to disappear. The reason here is that custom books—the books that instructors create out of existing textbooks and their own materials—are becoming so popular that cross references will only make sense if the entire textbook is used; they’ll prove incomprehensible when they refer to deleted chapters.

4.      Third party URLs are being deleted because of their unreliability. Although this system requires extra clicks for those using a digital edition, the lack of permanence seems to have been the deciding factor in eliminating all URLs except those of the publisher. When citing a website article as a source, the organization, college, or agency rather than the URL is given.

5.      A more rigid organizational structure with numbered Learning Objectives prefacing each chapter, repeated in the chapter’s main headings, and again in the summary will become standard. I think one reason for this is the assumption being made that it’s good pedagogy. Another reason I’m sure has to do with digitizing and coordinating the varied materials that now come with the textbook.

6.      Cartoons will probably be cut back or eliminated entirely, largely because of cost (they’re much more expensive than photos) and digital permission problems.  Cartoons are also different in that some people really like them and others don’t.

7.      Media components will be increased.  Online videos, exercises, and vocabulary quizzes, for example, will become part of the textbook package.

The Nonverbal Communication Book TOC

Here is the Table of Contents for The Nonverbal Communication Book.

The Nonverbal Communication Book

 

Contents in Brief

 

Welcome to The Nonverbal Communication Book

 

Part One. Foundations of Nonverbal Communication

1.      Introducing Nonverbal Communication

 

Part Two. The Codes of Nonverbal Communication

2.      Body Messages

3.      Facial Messages

4.      Eye Messages

5.      Artifactual Messages

6.      Space Messages

7.      Touch Messages

8.      Paralanguage and Silence Messages

9.      Time Messages

 

Part Three. Putting It All Together

10.  Attraction, Deception, Immediacy, and Power

 

Appendixes

A.    Researching Nonverbal Communication

B.     Creating a Video on Nonverbal Communication

 

Glossary of 200 Nonverbal Communication Concepts

 

References

 

Index

The Nonverbal Communication Book Preface

Recently, I published The Nonverbal Communication Book with Kendall Hunt.  Here is the preface; the TOC will follow in another post.

Welcome

to

The Nonverbal Communication Book

 

 

The Nonverbal Communication Book is one of many textbooks currently available for the popular Nonverbal Communication course. This book, however, is different in several important respects. Here I explain the focus of the text, its plan and organization, and the ways it may be used.

TGIF, Negativity, and Optimism

 

 

The other day I got a call from a person who wanted to sell me marketing services. In our “hello, how are you” phase, he responded with “very good, after all it’s Friday.” And so I thought about what he intended to communicate with this TGIF reference. It could have been lots of things: a cliché response that one says on Friday rather mindlessly, an expression of relief that the work week is over, a negative evaluation of life at work, or perhaps a comment to assure me that he had a life beyond work. And on Facebook and other social media sites a great number of people note their anticipation of Friday and the weekend, probably as genuine expressions of the joy of not working but perhaps also to communicate their (implied) exciting weekend.

 For many listeners/readers, however, the meaning communicated is not at all positive. For example, I didn’t feel that this marketing person was really interested in his job or in me; rather, that he was focused on Friday, the end of work, and the weekend—whether he really was or not. Do I really want to do business with someone who is just marking time? The customer, client, student, and patient don’t want to deal with people who are focused on after-work activities; they want to deal with people who enjoy their job because these are the people who make dealing with them a positive experience.

Perhaps the most important message that these comments communicate is to the prospective employer who reads the potential employee’s social media posts and concludes that this person really doesn’t want to work. It’s the equivalent of an interviewee bad-mouthing a previous employer—one of the major mistakes novice interviewees make. It conveys a negativity that is just not productive and not what employers are looking for. In the current issue of Fortune (June 10, 2013) there’s a great article on Barbara Corcoran, founder of the Corcoran Group—a huge real estate firm—panelist on Shark Tank and popular guest on talk shows. Among her advice to managers and others in positions of workplace influence is to protect your company’s optimism. “The minute I spotted a chronic complainer, I’d fire them,” says Corcoran. “I didn’t care how much money they brought in because negativity kills optimism and belief in the future.”

None of this is to say that it’s wrong or unethical to TGIF—hey, if that’s how you feel, that’s how you feel. The problem comes in when you post it and the prospective employer reads it, for example; you’re simply loading the dice against yourself.