Archive for the ‘Communication is about relationship’ Category
Memo To My People Updating My Facebook Page
How about a few less quotes from old dead white guys?
Post-election, let’s have a little less constitution-driven stuff. I need to sound hip and with-it (You kids still say that?). Sprinkle a few Malcolm X quotes in there (Yes?) and maybe—I don’t know— Nietzsche (why not?). Our business partners and potential clients need to see we’re deep and edgy. But trustworthy—so, ok—maybe a few quotes from Jefferson, but way less than three a week.
Jenny: Put the business books and blogs down: Covey and Collins are sounding stale. Give me more of that pithy stuff like Seth G. puts out. In fact—give Godin’s people a call and tap into that well they are pulling from. I want to sound more like Godin. And Spike Lee.
Jerrold: Give me more comments on human interest stuff. I need to sound warm and supportive. Potential clients need to see the entire organization as approachable—so that starts with me. And do the same with Ivan in the St. Petersburg office. He needs to sound a lot less like Putin, that grandstanding old propagandist. Ivan needs to sound like New Russia—starting now.
Jamison: you gotta tune my Twitter feed. Post-election, work with Jenny on the Godin and Spike Lee stuff—get me solid tweets that pull in about a thousand more young managers. Skew young!
All of you—people tell me I should read beyond history books. Make me current! Wired. Salon. The New Yorker (within reason). Whatever.
Jenny–What’s that? Godin writes his own stuff? Which of his people said that?
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Image credit: Sammy Slabbinck via 2headedsnake
Orange Mighty Trio, Jesus Kitchen & Other Public Devotees
What nourishes you?
exceeding cold Minnesota winter
Last weekend Mrs. Kirkistan and I were on our way to hear the Orange Mighty Trio at the Cedar (hoo boy were they good: listen to this sample). The folks of Jesus Kitchen offered us soup and cookies as we walked past their sidewalk encampment. The Jesus Kitchen looks to be a few college kids with the goal of reaching out to a populace that might find itself, well, drunk. Or homeless. Or just hungry. It’s a bold, cold, and uncomfortable mission (and part of something much larger).
I’ve seen them out late on exceeding-cold Minnesota winter nights. I applaud their very practical goals. Yes there are other more strategic ways to meet needs, but the statement they make by standing and beckoning others is warming. Their presence on that well-walked street—especially in the name of Jesus the Christ—is itself a mute and practical communication event.
The Cedar was a warm place with an enthusiastic crowd for the Orange Mighty Trio. And rightly so: their virtuoso performances spoke of all sorts of stuff that fits into words only lamely. Mrs. Kirkistan and I both commented on the productive thoughts we had during the concert. Listen to their “The Long Zoom” and pay attention to what comes to mind.
Both the Jesus Kitchen and the Orange Mighty Trio put the ineffable into action, if not exactly words. Both efforts have the capacity to nourish passers-by.
Which public does your devotion feed?
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Image credit: The SalvageYard
How to Talk About Stuff That Matters
2 Places to Begin
We’re at a restaurant, my friend and I. We have not seen each other for a while and I am eager to hear what is going on—really going on. Not just work. Not just hobbies or movies or other distractions. But what is the stuff touching my friend’s soul?
With some friends, a movie watched or a book read or a work assignment is the gateway to a conversation that opens up the irritations and joys, the tough marriage or relational issues we’re going through and the spiritual questions and self-doubts we’re currently entertaining. Maybe some ancient text seems to have pointed the way forward or that inveterate letter writer has provoked a response in us that looked like this set of actions last week. Those are conversations to cherish. They can fill a person up for long time—not with information but with connection and ideas and forward-motion.
With other friends, our work is the only topic and we don’t venture far from that. Rather than opening up, the conversation seems to circle the wagons and becomes something less. Probing is not part of this communication event. I leave somewhat disappointed.
Why is that? How can conversation be so different? I’ve often puzzled through this. Both conversations can happen with friends old and new. Maybe introvert/extrovert/personality type has something to do with it. Maybe trust has not built or has been destroyed. Or maybe we don’t have the language to adequately express what is going on or maybe the last time we were honest with someone they shot us down.
Conversation has so many variables that direct cause and effect is impossible to pin down. And there are no formulas or road maps. But two things are certain:
- Engaging in direct conversation is profitable. If not today, then tomorrow. Or next Tuesday. Or in a month/year. Engaging in conversation is a gift we give to each other, and sometimes it takes time to explore the topic and trust that has risen between us. Our conversation says we value someone.
- Our own willingness to share the deep stuff in us has a direct effect on opening the talk and life of our conversation partner. This is scary: what if someone doesn’t respond? What if they put me down? Trust and boldness help answer that question.
With whom will you talk about what matters today?
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Image credit: fer1972 via 2headedsnake
There Is No Litmus Test for President
There is only conviction and thinking and prayer and conversation.
And even that conversation will vary within your community.
I’m reminded of the paradoxes of the old culture wars. A couple decades ago when politics were just as heated and dialogue just as rare, Mrs. Kirkistan and I lived in a rough section of South Minneapolis. People of faith in our community—I’ll call them Christians—routinely voted “for” Democrats. Given the particular demographic quirks of the area, it was easy to understand why those candidates did better. For a variety of reasons (economic, housing, vision, spiritual) we ended up moving miles away. We eventually found ourselves at a large suburban church where the assumption was that everyone voted “for” Republicans. Mind you, much of this was never said aloud. It was all just assumed.
After all, Republicans were anti-abortion and that’s where God hangs out—right?
After all, Democrats cared for the poor and that’s where God hangs out—right?
The danger of litmus-test thinking is that it promises some clear, unassailable answer: the candidate is this or the candidate isn’t this. Case closed.
I argue that leadership is and always has been about more than one thing. There is no litmus test because the human condition is complex and society and culture are exponentially complex. And while I’m certain God is all about creating life, the Creator is also bent on sustaining life, so listening to the poor, the widow and the orphan take up a lot of column-inches in our common, ancient text. But even those are not litmus-like tests, because which party will actually do those things best?
I’m hoping the faith communities around the country will have conversations that help their members vote not according to some mandate from a culture-wars war-room, but instead according their growing convictions from dealing with texts, from conversation and from prayer.
It’s time the church led by being counter-culture.
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Image via thisisn’thappiness
How to Blog Your Company’s Top Voice
Your Company’s Outside Voice Must Be Personal & Remarkable
I’ve been helping a few clients think about their outside voice. Blogging has its own peculiar set of requirements that set it apart from the tone of a brochure, say. Or from a corporate press release. That recurring blog voice is related to the messaging identity your company has established. That voice is also related to the design and tone of your corporate website, true, but it is not a one-to-one correspondence.
One primary difference: your blog voice must be personal.
A blog is not a scientific, peer-reviewed journal. It must not deteriorate into a selling monologue. And it is not constantly pointing to benefits and features (which quickly gets tiresome). It’s a different animal—a personal voice. It’s got to be a conversation that takes wide and narrow routes on the way to discussing what is remarkable. The best blogs are smart and timely and pull readers in by offering this personal perspective on things of mutual interest.
Just a bit of practice using the public voice helps clients see why their outside voice must be personal and have a personality behind it (not as redundant as it sounds). It doesn’t take many sample posts to show that customers and potential customers are intrigued by an inside track into the mind of that top voice. And that top voice can pull peripheral topics to the center of discussion to show how they relate, for instance. Or to show how certain a practice will move the industry forward.
And remarkable.
Interestingly, outside voice has a way of trimming and freeing and impacting a company’s inside voice. Outside voice and inside voice are related—how could it be otherwise? What is remarkable (and thus worth blogging about) must also be remarkable on the inside of the company. The top voice blogging about what is remarkable in the industry must also pass the believability test for those inside the company. Because folks inside a company tune their BS meters to High the moment they walk in the door. Remaining personal and true is essential.
So…blogging the top voice is not an easy path. But that has always been the way of relationship-building with peers, employees, clients, customers and potential customers and even congregants. And relationship-building is worth the time and effort.
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Image Credit: We Made This via thisisnthappiness
Juxtapose: Alongside is the New Black
Confession from a monochrome space
Putting like and unlike next to each other can have unanticipated results. Chefs know this and routinely put tastes together that “should” never go together to create things that are suddenly wildly tasty (dumb example: salsa on scrambled eggs shattered the sheltered world of my taste buds. So did Chicken Tikka Masala). As a copywriter I pull from poetry and technology and design and even theology and philosophy to place a disparate idea next to my client’s problem to see what may result. It is tried and true method for breaking out of the invisible constraints we didn’t even know held us back.
Yesterday I talked with a friend about a Respectful Conversation Project she had been involved with concerning the upcoming state vote on the marriage amendment. She described the training in dialogue and how so few of us know the difference between dialogue and debate. Debate is our knee-jerk response to different.
And that’s too bad.
Because just a few honest questions about the story behind a conviction, for instance, can do a lot to grow understanding and empathy. It turns out there are academic groups dedicated to this notion of appreciative inquiry as a management tool and a method of organization development. And there are resources like the Respectful Conversation Project moving toward the same end in our communities.
“Alongside” is an effective, creative tool that can build understanding and empathy and solve problems.
I’m still new to this generous notion of “alongside.” My formative years were spent in a land of black and white, where good was good and bad was bad and any fool could distinguish between. This monochrome way of life instilled deep revulsion (yes, that is the word) toward any pursuit of naming the shades of color between the usual poles. It’s taken years and questions and lots of discussion with patient friends but I still find myself curiously uninformed about all the places “alongside” can appear.
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Image via 2headedsnake
Malala Got Shot for Just Saying
What We Say Matters
In his fascinating After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (NY: Oxford University Press, 1975), George Steiner speculated on the origins of languages. At first it seems like a no-brainer: given all the people and geographies and histories and wars and all that has happened over time, sure, we have a whole lot of languages. But Steiner goes all systematic through the known number of languages over the course of history and asks the rather obvious question: Why? Given that human bodies all work roughly the same way, and that we ingest roughly the same foods the world over, and the we all need air and water and sunshine and coffee (ahem)…why is it again we don’t all speak the same language? It’s a great question and his book is a readable and erudite discussion on the topic. I’m only a few chapters in, but two things stand out:
- Steiner believes all of communication is translation. Whether inside a language or between languages, we are constantly translating and decoding words and meaning. I think he is right about that: there is no end to trying to understand each other. Even couples married for decades need to translate the words spoken by the spouse to understand what it is they really meant. And then to sort out what they should do about it.
- Steiner speculated on a “proto-language,” a sort of first language from which all other languages descended. Steiner called it Ur-Sprache (p.58) and likened it to the language of Eden. A supremely powerful language that when spoken, made stuff happen. One need only think of a couple old Bible stories to get the sense of the promise of this old language: God speaking stuff into existence and Adam naming all the animals (with no committees second-guessing his naming choices).
But…alas…this language is no more.
Or is it?
Maybe we still see hints of Ur-Sprache every day, when we say things and our saying seems to make it so. Saying a thought aloud has a kind of generative effect. Not always. And with more or less effect. But still—stuff happens when we talk.
Maybe this is why people in the U.S. hold so tightly to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. And why people all over the world agree that freedom of speech is a human right (except for despots, when speech calls attention to their efforts to rape and pillage their people). And maybe that’s why we feel almost personally violated by the Taliban in Pakistan singling out and shooting a teenager (Malala Yousafzai) for speaking her mind. It is beyond repulsive. Beyond degenerate.
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Image Credits: Vladimir Kush, AFP/Getty Images
Outside Voice
Recalibrate Your Tribe to Grow
One of our kids was loud. When this particular child was quite young, Mrs. Kirkistan and I spent lots of time distinguishing an inside voice from an outside voice. This particular person (not naming names) did not sort out the difference until a certain age had been reached. But then it became clear to [Child X] why you might not shout your happiness with the world at 5am, for instance. This person still has the capacity to be heard—which I admire.
Patrick R. Keifert’s, “Welcoming The Stranger : A Public Theology Of Worship And Evangelism” (Minneapolis:Fortress Press, 1992) is a sort of outside voice/inside voice book for an organization. Yes, he’s a pastor writing to pastors. But his topic is much larger and dovetails with all sorts of human groups. He tells stories and redacts around the notion of how off-putting our insider language and idiosyncratic group behaviors can be to new people—those not of the tribe. It happens in a church. It happens in a family (I still do not have the courage to ask my new son-in-law what peculiar behaviors he notices when our family is gathered). It happens in a business. It happens on Minnesota interstates: drivers resent others trying to merge into traffic from an on-ramp. Is that peculiar to Minneapolis/St. Paul drivers or is it a Minnesota thing?
I’m enjoying Keifert’s book because he makes a compelling case for why we should listen to the stranger. He traces the roots of this listening to deep theological places and hints at how we were made for this very kind of interchange. But he also notes there are dangers in hearing the stranger (“Wait—what is this guy up to?”). He points out my unthinking refusal to let focus slip away from me as the all-consuming center of the universe. The end game is that I typically hear the stranger saying only those certain words that fit my view of the world. And we all have experience with that.
But hearing the outside voice in our family, church or company can help us get unstuck—especially when we don’t know we’re stuck.
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Image Credit via 2headedsnake
Today’s 1pm Meeting: Make It Work
Zoning out should not be an option.
Cut the web. Don’t zone out.
Not every meeting is a useless waste of time. Some of my must-read copywriting bloggers have written about meetings they attended ranging from useless to suicide-inducing.
But I recently sat with a client to hash out what was going right with their messaging to a particular audience. They had seen a spate of cutting-through-the-clutter moments with a particular set of customers and the wins were tumbling in.
People from different roles in the organization pulled up to the big conference table. Each spoke to the success with this audience from the vantage point their position afforded. I was there to hear and gather and (ultimately) tighten and sharpen the message. The message—and the story around the message—would fuel a set of communication vehicles and events.
The meeting was entirely successful, at least for me, because I could question and challenge as the discussion unwound. And my pages of notes have served to bring back quotes and directions. Just connecting the dots on my notes has been productive.
All this to say it is up to us to make a meeting work. That means cutting through the rhetorical web spun by the power-seekers. Sometimes we need to call “bull” on people. And sometimes we need to play catalyst and lob a softball question to pull forward the silent person’s thoughts.
Zoning out should not be an option.
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Image Credit: via Frank T. Zumbachs Mysterious World
I Believe Your Story. God Have Mercy if it Proves False.
Sucker turns scrapper when story unravels
Duped is Dangerous
The woman shouting optimistic, full sentences from the top of the dune (that story here) highlighted my own willingness to be entrapped by a story. Although I have much of the cynic/skeptic in me, my basic approach to communication is to believe what is in front of me. This bit of openness (or blindness, as the case may be) allows me to enjoy stupid movies. Example: I watched and even finished Fast Five the other day. Fast Five is nothing but a string of car chases. In Rio. That’s it. I guess there was gunplay and corrupt officials and a few pretty girls. But the cars steal the show and the vault (I’ve said too much).
The movie never really asked me to believe it. From the beginning it was just a string of car chases.
Mrs. Kirkistan costumes theater productions. We often talk about what happens to actors the first time they put on their costume: they inhabit the clothing in a very visible way. The actor in costume becomes the character before your eyes. You believe, partly because the actor now believes all the more.
In the same way, we also talk about what happens when the costumes in a staged production are wrong. It’s not just that the production looks bad; it’s that the believability is sucked from the room and the play turns sour. The ill-fitting or badly adapted costume shouts, “This is a fiction.” Of course, the audience knew this already, but they had suspended disbelief. Until now.
And when the story unravels and proves false, you feel duped.
Duped is Dangerous
No one wants to be sold something. No one wants to be taken advantage of. And when we find we have been sold a bill of goods (as the cliché goes), our cynical/skeptical knob gets turned a notch or two. Sometimes we even become enemies. This is true for advertising. This is true for the company line the CEO utters from the podium. It is true for the pastor’s manipulative reading of a text from the pulpit. It is true for the talkative salesperson at the AT&T store. People turn when duped: loyal employees, devoted congregants, potential customers—each has the capacity to become the opposite when the truth is revealed.
Keeping things believable is tough work and a big challenge all the way through a communication event. Maybe that is why evangelizing for something you don’t fully believe is so hard if not impossible.
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Image Credit: assorted schmidt via thisisnthappiness
conversation is an engine 