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October 29, 2009

A darn good panel discussion

Readers of this blog know that I am no fan of panel discussions. (Just a few weeks ago, I wrote a whiny entry after suffering through a deadly dull session.)

So a couple of weeks ago, when I took my seat to watch a panel discussion on “Reputation Management in Today’s World” at the IABC Pacific Plains Exchange Conference, I was not optimistic.

The discussion started as these things do: Panelists were introduced, each one said a few words, and the energy level stayed low. But then the event started to take a turn for the better. After about 15 minutes, I realized that I was enjoying myself. The audience was participating. The discussion was actually interesting.

Once I realized that this panel discussion was beating the odds, I began to analyze what was making it work. Here are a few observations:

The moderator (Bob Brin, director of Padilla Gorilla , a division of Padilla Speer Beardsley) was dynamic, energetic and light on his feet. Rather than staying frozen behind a podium or sitting at the table, he stood in front of the panel near the audience, holding a hand-held mike. He moved around. He kept his eye on audience members, alert for interaction. He had a few canned questions, but was also flexible, riffing off what panelists was saying, letting the conversation go where it flowed.

All four panelists— Jennifer Kane, principal, Kane Consulting; Tom Keefe, enterprise communications manager, VW Credit, Inc.; Paul Omodt, vice president, crisis and critical issues, Padilla Speer Beardsley and Rachel Watkins, director, employee communications, Xilinx—were lively and articulate. They gave mostly brief answers. And they didn’t grandstand—they responded to the moderator, the audience and to each other.

Not every panelist felt compelled to answer every question. This is important: If every time a question is answered, you have to go down the line of panelists one by one, the format becomes repetitive and leaden. In this panel, things were lighter, more unexpected. You didn’t know who would respond next, and what that response would lead to. That created more energy.

Jennifer Kane, in particular, was terrific. She’s got the gift of using vivid metaphors to make a point. For example, in talking about the way companies approach social media for the first time, she cautioned that they tend to plunge right in and make a statement rather than listening to the conversation. “It would be like walking in the door at a party and shouting, ‘Hi, everybody! Aren’t I great! I want to tell you all about myself!’ That’s not a good strategy for parties and it doesn’t work in social media, either.”

In short, the session wasn’t the most exciting hour I’ve ever spent, but it was about as good as a panel discussion can be. And that’s high praise indeed.

Posted by Alison Davis at 08:18 AM | Comments (1)

October 25, 2009

Less perfect, more authentic?

I just read an intriguing e-newsletter by Michael Katz, who gives advice on e-newsletters (in his e-newsletter, of course).

Here’s the crux of his message: Because the line is continuing to blur between our personal selves and our professional selves, the way we do business will soon change.

Meaning what? “With every passing day, there is less tolerance for company-speak, less interest in being sold to, and a rising expectation that you and your colleagues make yourselves available to the outside world for immediate and easy interaction,” Mr. Katz writes. As a result, there will soon be a new expectation “that the disembodied voices behind the company walls come forward and reveal themselves as real, accessible, three-dimensional people.”

That means less emphasis on branding (which, after all, is shiny, controlled, perfect, finished) and more on authenticity (in all its imperfect, messy, human real-ness.)

As Mr. Katz writes, “Crafting a perfect tagline or benefit statement is less and less important in a world where human connection is what people hunger for.”

He’s talking about marketing, but doesn’t the same apply to communicating and connecting with employees as well?

Posted by Alison Davis at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

October 09, 2009

How has public speaking changed in the last 75 years?

Read this terrific blog post from David Murray, editor of Vital Speeches of the Day, for an insightful perspective on how public speaking has changed—and how it hasn't.

Posted by Alison Davis at 07:54 AM | Comments (0)

October 06, 2009

Ms. High Maintenance

Last night my busy client sent me an email asking if I could quickly create a few polling questions to get employee feedback about recent change communication.

“Sure,” I responded in an early-morning e-mail. “But can we talk first?”

A few minutes later, the client sent me a message via her Blackberry. “Gosh you are high maintenance for a consultant :-),” she wrote. I could picture her sighing, and then (reluctantly) agreeing, “Yes, we can converse. Be back in my office in 15 minutes. I’ll call you.”

Call me Ms. High Maintenance. (Obviously, this client does). But one thing my years of experience have taught me is that it’s rarely effective to plunge in and respond to a request without context. It’s so much better to pause, collect one’s thoughts and have a brief conversation that explores:

Another key question is: How does this relate to other things we’ve done or will do? In this case, that insight came from a colleague (we’ll call him “David”) who is also supporting this client. As soon as David heard “polling questions,” he suggested I look at other survey questions we’ve created for the client to see how those could be repurposed.

The result of five minutes of groundwork? The assignment took less time and resulted in more purposeful, on-target work than could have been produced by blindly implementing.

Remember: High maintenance can be a good thing.

Posted by Alison Davis at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)