Archive for the ‘Communication is about relationship’ Category
“Do You Know Bob? You Should Meet Bob.”
Listen when your friend says this.
After your friend hears what you have to say and then responds with,
Hey—have you ever asked Judy about that? Because Judy talks constantly about that very thing.
Listen.
And then go meet Judy. Or Bob.
Because a friend’s recommendation—after seeing a similarity or spark of sameness—can be telling. The connection your friend saw to make the recommendation implies you have something in common with this other person. Some way of thinking that will form a third-rail for communication.
And that is worth following up on.
I think Keith introduced me to Steve—likely through some offhand comment. Steve is a C-suite communication guy who also teaches and we talk about communication strategy, corporate life versus freelance life, life in agencies and the demands of teaching. I’ve had coffee with Steve a couple times and I honestly don’t think I could find more wisdom and excellent advice and weathered perspectives if I paid Seth Godin’s consulting fee for an hour of talk.
We have no clue what might happen with a connection. No idea where a conversation will go.
This remains amazing to me.
###
Image credit: Garry Winogrand via MPD
Boss: With this ping, I have now pled
Think Globally. Act Tactically.
Sometimes we just do our job.
Sometimes we think bigger thoughts and help our boss sort out what next—long before being asked.
I maintain our best work comes from that place where we think strategically and act tactically. Our best work comes from big thinking harnessed to this moment’s need.
Today in our copywriting class we talk about relationships with clients. My line on this is to cherish, honor and protect your client—which starts to sound like a marriage—not quite the right analogy.
Then again, maybe it isn’t far off.
Clients are people who trust us to handle their message. They’ve hired us to do something they cannot do. This is a privilege. Our favorite clients know the best work comes from well-articulated need and parameters followed by the freedom to go and do. And sometimes our clients depend on us to help articulate those needs and define those parameters—simply because we get very close to the need.
This is where the copywriter’s outside perspective helps immensely. It’s also where we deploy our skill of listening into the deep waters of what our client eats/sleeps/breathes/knows. Because sometimes what seemed like only tactical work can turn into an opportunity even the client didn’t realize was before them. And we need to say so.
Such is the opportunity with collaborative teamwork and trusting work relationships. And that’s why it is important copywriters always think Grande or even Venti rather than Short.
Here’s to clients! (Jaunty raising of the ice water glass)
Long may they…, well. Hire.
###
Edward Hopper: How to Talk to Yourself
Can a conversation result in art?
The answer can only be “Yes!”
Not every conversation, mind you. But some will.
Last weekend Mrs. Kirkistan and I (plus our art-student daughter) wended our way through the sketches and drawings by Edward Hopper currently on display at the Walker. As a nation we’re quite familiar with Mr. Hopper’s drawings and paintings—today they seem perfectly obvious explanations of life in America. But I was intrigued by how he got there. What was his process for producing such enduring images? How did he see what he saw?
His sketches look like conversations with himself. Look how he developed the frame for his (well-beloved, much parodied) Nighthawks at the Diner. His sketches add layer to nuance to layer. It’s almost as if he were explaining something to himself with one approximation and then another and then another. Sort of like conversations with our best friend where we allow each other to say it wrong even as we pursue saying it right.
Hopper was a man given to observation and keen on interpreting detail. With quick strokes he captured form and mood and motion. And there’s no question he had an eye for the ladies:
Hopper seemed to never stop observing and capturing. Again and again and again. He spent hours sitting at favorite locations and sketching and perhaps waiting. This quote from Mr. Hopper hints at his process:
My aim in painting is always, using nature as the medium, to try to project upon canvas my most intimate reaction to the subject as it appears when I like it most….
I’ve been a fan of sketches for some time because they give a behind-the-scenes picture into how someone’s mind works. The Hopper exhibit at the Walker does not disappoint. And I cannot help but think how sketches provide such a rich analog to our collaborative conversations.
###
Image credit: Kirk Livingston photos taken at Edward Hopper exhibit, Walker Art Center
How to Cherish Your Provocateurs
Who has the power to rile you?
If you were an all-powerful despot, you might rid yourself of those who disagree. That’s the path of the Stalins, Hitlers and Kim Jong [Whatevers] of the world:
- “Off to Siberia with you.”
- “Work will make you free in this concentration camp.”
- “Here, Uncle, let’s execute you and your entire family.”
But the rest of us don’t have that power. And that is a good thing. Because it turns out we need these people around us who disagree and who see things differently. That’s because no one of us sees things entirely clearly. We need each other to piece together the big picture.
In my country, the United States, we are fond of cocooning with other like-minded members of our tribe. So we listen only to people who agree with us. We develop and watch television and listen to radio that reinforces what we think. We read only the diatribes that we might have written. In our age of cozy groupthink communities, we are quick to hit the panic button for any word that is off ideology, and quick to dissociate with those with a whiff of aberration.
Perhaps other countries have the same problem.
But what if we’ve got it all wrong? What if these different people, these provocateurs actually were providing us with a new, even more true way of looking at the world? What if these people were a kind of gift to us? And what if starting to see from their perspective was more akin to finding a $20 bill in the street?
Big groups of foreigners routinely make their way to Minneapolis and St. Paul. They are very odd, they speak in strange tongues, where strange dress. Have odd habits.
Until they don’t and aren’t.
Until they are us.
Walk back through the public rolls far enough and you’ll find your grandparents were these foreigners. Swedes, Norwegians, Italians, Finns, Hmong, Somalian. I suspect you’d even find a few people from Iowa. If the housing stock in South Minneapolis could talk, it would speak all these languages and many, many more.
The point: rather than fear the stranger, can we ask what there is to learn from this other way of looking at the world?
###
Humble Inquiry: To Lead is to Listen
Help Team Members Find Their Roles
The important lesson here is that teams almost always work better when the higher status person in the group exhibits some humility by active listening, this acknowledges that the others are crucial to good outcomes and creates psychological space for them to develop identities and roles in the group that feel equitable and fair.
…someone is still in charge, but if the group has a chance to evolve, the members can find their niches that both facilitate the accomplishment of the task and satisfy their own personal needs. Status and rank do not become equal, but teammates are comfortable with the appropriate amount of status commensurate with their roles.
Helping: How to Offer, Give, and Receive Help by Edgar H. Schein (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009) 108
###
Image credit: Allison V. Smith via MPD
What is Your Purpose with Your People?
Can You Articulate Your “Why?” and “What for?”
I’ve been gushing over Improv Wisdom lately, this 2005 book by Patricia Ryan Madson. I’m thinking of buying a number of copies to give away and wondering how I can incorporate it as a supplemental text in my next classes. The book is easy to read, memorable and full of actionable wisdom all directed at staying in the moment and building something with others. Ms. Madson—a drama professor at Stanford, improv maniac, eager collaborator and kind-hearted encourager—brings a lot of life to how we can work with others. Now I find myself ordering the primary source texts cited by Ms. Madson.
Ms. Madson has been kind enough to respond to my tweeted epiphanies when reading her book. I am impressed by the longevity and timeliness of certain ideas. Ms. Madson’s 2005 book will likely be relevant for a long, long time.
As I finish with my Social Media Marketing class, I’m reading reflections from the students. One near universal regret was not having a clearer sense of their purposes for the communities they were trying to create. We spent focused time on this early on in the class, but forming a crystal clear picture of what we want to accomplish with others is neither easily understood nor often practiced. I know this from the number of companies I’ve been in that operated every day without a clear sense of what they were trying to do with their audiences.
Students resist the tightly-formed purpose and the close definition of their audience because it feels so restrictive. It just feels easier to write anything for everyone. At least that’s how the class always starts. But at the end of the class, there are multiple confessions about how the tight purpose and close definition actually freed them to say much, much more to their target audience. This experience fits with a bit of improv wisdom Ms. Madson offered:
Rather than asking “What do I feel like doing?” when a free moment arises, instead ask “What is my purpose?”
I love this question for my class and I love this question personally. The question presupposes I have a purpose and assumes I know that purpose. The question assumes I am conversant with my purpose and assumes I am in the habit of articulating it to myself and others.
All these presuppositions and assumptions are worth pursuing. Going back to our purpose again and again sounds like bearing fruit over a lifetime.
And this: Patricia Ryan Madson should write more books.
###
Image credit: imgur
To My 19-Year-Old Self: Embrace the Timer
This Permission Tool Will Calm and Kick You
Look—I know you get all fidgety about the stuff you’ve got to do: the papers to write, the group projects to complete, the hours at work and the woman you’re trying to work up the nerve to ask out. Finals coming—have you even read the chapters? Plus all the pressure to assemble a plan for the rest of your life. Get on that! (Ha! Here’s a hint: your plans will scatter like water on a hot skillet. Again and again. But you still have to plan.)
That’s why I’m writing, lo from across these many decades.
Behold: the timer.
Like an egg timer only with more time and without the eggs.
The timer is a permission tool you can employ today. The timer will grant you focus and peace of mind. The timer will calm your fidgety, anxious self. The timer puts an end to the ridiculous argument that you can do several things at once. You may find this hard to believe, but in the decades to come people routinely kill others while driving and opt out of deep life-changing conversations because they “multitask” (big word in twenty years). Wacky, right?
Here’s how the timer works:
You’re not gonna believe the free stuff on this thing Al Gore invented called the “Internet.” Oh: buy Apple stock.
- Look at the big pile of stuff you’ve got to do.
- Pick the most important thing. Just one thing.
- Set the timer for 60 minutes.
- Start the timer.
- Do that one thing.
- Do that thing for 60 minutes. Don’t get coffee. Don’t talk to your roommates. Don’t daydream about that beautiful woman. Don’t stare out the window. Do the one thing.
- When the timer rings, get up and do all that other stuff.
- In fifteen minutes, pick the next thing, set the timer and repeat the process.
Sound simple? It is!
Listen, Mr. 19-year-old Kirkistan: this is how you are going to get stuff done for the rest of your life. Even enormous projects tremble when the timer shows up. Almost everything in life can be broken into manageable segments.
And this: You emerge a happier person when the timer goes off. Because you actually did something.
I think you have a timer on that big plastic watch of yours.
Try it.
Now.
###
conversation is an engine 
