Unless you’ve been living under a rock, two events have leapt into America’s consciousness this week. The first was the Tea Party protests involving hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans in hundreds of cities all around the country.
Susan Boyle
The second was the sudden and stunning success of previously unknown church choir singer, Susan Boyle, who wowed judges and the audience in an audition for Britain’s Got Talent, the Anglican version of American Idol. Since Saturday night when her first song was broadcast to a British audience, Ms. Boyle’s televised appearance has been viewed by no less than 40 million people, a population eight times that of her native Scotland.
In just the last 24 hours she has been mentioned, complete with a color picture, on the front page of the Washington Post, was interviewed live on the CBS Early Show, and has been booked for an appearance on Oprah.
What these two seemingly unrelated events have in common is the internet.
To riff off of one of the comments, the revolution will not be televised – it will be on YouTube!
In a more serious vein, however, the example of Susan Boyle reveals two important things:
Regular people can now become as famous as any celebrity. The video of Boyle’s performance contained the perfect combination of a stereotypical set-up, a surprising twist, and a heart-warming response. I have a feeling that we are going to be hearing from Ms. Boyle again.
Succumbing to cynicism and “judging a book by its cover” just might put one into a very uncomfortable position. If Simon Cowell were not known for his disdain for most performers on these talent shows he would have looked like a real jerk.
I recently had a disturbing experience: a misunderstanding with a dear friend during which I began to wonder if language could be too communicative.
The cop and the writer
I’ve been a professional writer for almost eight years. My friend has been a professional cop for over 25 years. I tease him about his “trust issues.” He teases me about my “big words.” Our misunderstanding centered, of course, on both.
Some of his words had hurt my feelings. My response hurt his. His communication began to resemble police radio traffic: terse, brief. I went in the other direction, apologizing profusely, multiple times, as clearly and yet as eloquently as I could. I wanted to convince him how deeply I felt my regret, how much I wanted to put it behind us and move on.
Still he didn’t budge, and I finally gave up. He did not seem able to trust what I was telling him. So I agreed with him that professional communication was best for the time being, and I too backed off.
Is my word my bond?
Most of us who blog as part of our businesses have some facility for words. We may not write with Liz’ poetry or Chris Brogan’s sensibility or Amber Naslund’s passion, but we trust our own ability to use the written word to communicate most accurately what is on our minds.
So whether writing is one tool in an arsenal of many, or the form of communication we rely on most, the idea that someone can’t trust our words is a reason to stop and evaluate. Why did the words fail? What does it mean? Was there too much of “us” and not enough of “them”? Does a fundamental communication gulf exist that threatens the whole relationship?
In my case, my writing may have been too honest, too desperate in its quest to be taken at face value. It was based on what I have learned: to use words to clarify. I never stopped to think that in my friend’s world, words are used to conceal. In fact, veteran cops will tell you that the longer someone tries to convince you of something, the more likely it is that s/he is lying. Needless to say, this was not the message I wanted to send.
Doing it their way
Not everyone trusts strong written communication, forceful speeches, or social network websites. Marketers know that the key is to find what people do trust, then use the appropriate tool. So too with individuals and words. This is harder than it looks. Writing and analysis are my strengths, but to talk to my friend the cop, I now need to emphasize using the phone and humor—two of my worst weaknesses.
This is a strong friendship, and I’m willing to make room for an opposite style of communication. But where’s the line? How do you decide when to accommodate, and when to cut your losses?
Ever patiently listened while another person talked? Ever planned a mental vacation while someone, so completely wrapped up in expressing the details of a thought, didn’t notice you had checked out?
Yeah, I’ve been in there, too.
But yesterday, at least once, I was the one who forgot that I was supposed to let someone else talk. I wandered through my head while I lost the chance to hear another person’s thoughts. He was miles away before I realized he was gone. By that time, the conversation had gone woefully, off course. I wish that guy would have found a way to turn me “off.”
He was generous when I apologized, but by then, he was done. Hope he, at least, had found a mental vacation spot more intriguing than the subject I’d been endlessly exploring without him.
How do you give back a conversation to someone who’s checked out?
I was 13. What an awful age, but one for learning human dynamics.
A bunch of clueless moms had arranged something, a sleepover of about 8 girls. Who knows why they thought this group belonged together? We were mismatched in maturity, in intelligence, in interests, and most importantly in that sacred cow of 13-year-oldness … popularity. I dreaded going.
Additional humiliation. We all had to wear granny gowns.
Everything went in the awkward and tensely exciting way things do when you’re 13. I was mostly listening. Mostly everyone was mostly nice to mostly everyone. We ate. We talked. We listened to music.
I was the first in the group to use the facilities up the stairs. The group didn’t realize that a heating vent connected the party room to the bath room. That vent also served as a back channel intercom.
I heard them talk and laugh. They were talking “cool talk” about how cool they were and how cool I was not. Peer pressure and insecurity drives that sort of stuff. When you’re 13, finding who’s the coolest is the coolest thing of all.
Back downstairs, I didn’t let on. Other girls left the room. Other girls heard things. I saw it on their faces.
Before I went to sleep I vowed a 13-year-old’s vow that I’d never be a smiler who talked mean on a “back channel intercom.”
Air and Empty Shoes
Now, I send you a tweet. I write a comment on your blog. You answer.
I can’t see you. You can’t see me. That can be a scary feeling.
I have to use what you give me to decipher whether you mean what you say. Who knows? You could be laughing behind the screen. You could be back channeling messages. You could contradict what you tell me when you’re with cooler kids than I am.
But then offline life is like that too. . . .
Trust doesn’t happen spontaneously. We can’t engineer a community by inviting 8 pseudo friends to the same party or dressing in the same clothes. And as a species, it’s our nature to have all too many back channel intercoms.
I can’t see you. You can’t see me.
If we’re invisible, so are the things we stand for.
Can’t build much that lasts on air and empty shoes.
But we can let ourselves and our values shine through.
Integrity, consistency, and trustworthiness show up equally as whole and as frequently as we do.
Community grows from what we see, what we are, what we imagine together.
And the more we show up, the more we find in each other.
How do you trust people you can’t see?
People ask me that all the time. Now I’m asking you.
Suzannah of the Square Periods — you know the editor, who didn’t play the banjo but should have — was one of three editors who had started work on the same day. I started work as their Executive Editor a few months after. Sheila and Kris had been teachers. Suzannah’s husband was a teacher still.
What all three editors knew about pay raises looked like the scheduled increases of teacher salaries.
That, unfortunately, turned out to be a problem.
When the time came for their first-year performance appraisals, I met with each of them individually. We went through the process of how the self-appraisal part worked, what I would do after that, and what we would talk about together.
Sheila, the star of the three, was already being considered for the next promotion. In the meeting with Sheila something unusual came up. She might have been looking to short-circuit what she didn’t want to happen.
Only Fair or Is It?
Sheila told me about an agreement the three editors had made.
“The three of us are having lunch to celebrate our first anniversary.” Sheila mentioned that they had agreed to reveal the amount of their salary increases. She said they wanted to be sure everyone was treated fairly.
“Oooh. That’s not a good idea.” I said. “I don’t think you want everyone to make the same.”
“Why’s that?ââ¬Â she asked. Remember that teachers don’t go to business school. They think in terms of grades and whole class rules. We spoke about company no tell policy, but I was focused on getting her personal investment in not wanting to share. Understanding that the no tell policy is a support and a protection is important.
“Imagine I hire a guy named Frank with a resume just like yours on the very same day as I hire you. One year later, you’ve done great work. You have managed three projects on your own. Whereas Frank has been confused at every turn and managed to screw up two projects so badly, they will miss their release dates by months. Same raises for both of you?”
“No.”
Sheila had just figured it out.
Money is paid for what the work is worth — and for management of that work in the company’s interest.
The more I wake up in the middle of the night, the more I have to think about the goals of the company, the more I’m responsible for the work of others, the more money I should make. Money = stress, execution, productivity, responsibility. End of story.
I then had the same conversation with the other two. The lunch happened. The salary revealing discussion did not.
Business Rule 9 may sound simplistic, if you already know it.
It’s key to ANY negotiation. When I learned it, suddenly I knew I understood how to buy a new car and how to purchase a house. The mysteries of talking money started to demystify before me. The value of money isn’t just important at work.
At the end of the their first year, new editors begin to “find their feet.” They’ve been through the publishing process; completed one or more projects; and know considerably more about making books than they did when they first walked through the door.
We were working on 8-page readers. These books were for kids at the earliest stages of their reading career.
We were at the beginning of the book design process. On this day, we had met to review book design samples and had chosen the one we would go with ââ¬â a large square, 8 inches de all photo or art but a one-inch band for type across the bottom of the page.
The typeface was one of the four then available that had an “open a” and an “open g.” These two letters are important to early readers because they help kids make connections. They look the same way kids are taught to write them.
I tell you this because the discussion of the open a and open g led one first year-editor to over-generalize, taking her woefully astray. Two hours after the design meeting, Suzannah, the editor, came into my office looking seriously concerned.
“We have a problem,” she said.
“I see. Tell me about it.”
“We can’t use this typeface we have chosen. It has square periods.”
She showed me a two-page design spread that had two giant pictures, one sentence per page. She pointed to the periods. Indeed they were square. Pixels are square. So are periods. I guess she hadn’t noticed that you have to go through a few typefaces to find periods that are not. Itââ¬â¢s kind of like kissing frogs to find a prince. It takes a lot.
“Okay, lay out your thinking.”
“First-grade teachers teach kids to make their periods round like this,” she said demonstrating. She took out a sheet of paper and wrote a sentence like a first grade teacher might — though she had never taught, she seemed awfully certain of exactly how it was done.
“And the typeface is a problem because . . . ”
“It’s different from the teachers’ model.”
“Oh, Suzannah. Now I see.” I turned the two-page spread back to face her. “What you’re saying is . . . if I made another spread exactly like this one replacing only the square periods with round ones, . . . and if I showed the two spreads to ten teachers and asked them to tell me what was different, all ten would see it right away.”
“Oh yes,” said Suzannah. By now I’m thinking, I’d better get this girl a banjo for her knee, because she’s not seeing the world the way it really is.
“That’s okay, Suzannah. I’ll take the hit. I take full responsibility. For every letter or returned book we get because of square periods, the heat will come down on me.”
I’m not sure how long it took for her to get perspctive. I knew there was no convincing her just then. It’s hard to have an unbiased world view when you’re in love with the information in your own head.
Remembering what we once didn’t know seems to be an acquired skill not a natural talent.
That can lead us to endow our customers with information that they have no way of knowing and to us deciding what’s important to them.
Caring for customers is the goal. Configuring them is the problem. Don’t fix square periods that folks don’t even see.
I bet there are “square periods” in your line of work — they show up in conversations where I work more often than I’d ever have thought.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
