When I meet with various clients in my role as an executive coach, a frequent question asked of me is:  How does one have a difficult conversation with an employee about ________?  The fill-in-the-blank might be any number of issues, from inappropriate dress to rude and belligerent emails.

My most recent conversation was with the CEO of a medium-sized company who was being rubbed raw by a habit of one his recent hires. That habit which he found most annoying was the constant chewing of gum in the office–everywhere in the office:  his cubicle, the hallway, in meetings, in the elevator. 

 He described the machinations of the gum chewing in great detail, even describing the types of bubbles the employee occasionally blew, with the inevitable POP he knew was coming and his dread of that moment.

After listening, I asked a very simple question:  Have you told him how annoying you find this to be?  His answer was also very simple:  No. 

Obviously, my next question was:  Why not?

“Well, why should I have to tell him something that is so obvious?  Doesn’t everyone know you don’t chew gum on the job?! (Obviously not.)  Surely he will figure it out.  I give him dirty looks.  Why can’t he read the disapproval on my face?  I feel silly discussing this conduct with an adult.”

My response was this:  Is all this really a rationalization for not having a difficult conversation?  He sheepishly replied in the affirmative.

None of us likes to have difficult conversations, within our personal or professional domains, but if we do not, our anger builds and becomes corrosive; our resentment feeds upon itself and becomes the dominant emotion we feel around this person; our helplessness grows and makes us feel powerless and hopeless…even if the issue is chewing gum.

A book I have ordered for all the attendees of an upcoming company retreat I am conducting includes some principles and basic do’s and don’t’s that will help all of us stratagize, plan, and execute a difficult conversation, with both parties leaving the interaction feeling intact and hopeful.  The book is called “Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life, One Conversation at a Time” by Susan Scott.

It is based upon her “Seven Principles of Fierce Conversations,” which include, for instance #1:  Master the courage to interrogate reality (”People change and forget to tell one another.”)  #4:  Tackle your toughest challenge today (”Burnout doesn’t occur because we’re solving problems; it occurs because we are solving the same problems over and over.  The problem named is the problem solved.”)  Or #6:  Take responsibility for your emotional wake (”For a leader, there is no trivial comment.”)

One of her major themes is:  The conversation IS the relationship.  Yet, most of us will lie to ourselves, to others; we will swallow our truths, fearing the outcome of truthfulness, imprisoning ourselves in deceit and passivity.

Scott gives basic tips on “Getting Started,” which most of think is the hardest part, and includes many actual examples and conversations which come from her own clients.  She urges the elimination of blame as a method of describing reality.  Other responses she asks us to avoid are sarcasm, exaggerating, saying “If I were you….,” and refusing to speak (which is not to be confused with the disciplined acceptance of the power and beauty of silence.)

This is a practical, short, readable book, simple without being superficial or simplistic.  The truths are obvious, but if they are so obvious, why can’t we have a simple conversation about how annoying gum chewing is in the workplace?

When I meet individually with clients in preparation for a high-stakes presentation, we usually begin with the Message–the content, its organization, its clarity, and flow–before we start work on the Messenger–the delivery, the manner in which the human element owns the message and presents it with confidence and comfort.

Often times, the presentation will also contain a Power Point slide show as part of the “staging” of the message.  I am usually surprised that the client has put together a very complete Power Point “show” before stategizing the purpose and plan of the message.  In other words, clients begin with a template, plug in the data in some sort of reasonable order, and then want to jump directly to the delivery part of the practice and preparation.

Then I tell them one of the most important principles of effective presentations:  Message Comes First; Message Drives the Power Point slides.  The Power Point slides do not drive the Message.  Almost 100% of the time clients do not abide by this principle.  Why?  Because it is easier than crafting a message first and then surrounding that message with a unique, supportive, visually appealing, surprising, “understated,” and persuasive Power Point.

So then we begin the hard and self-disciplined work of deciding the purpose of the presentation, its flow, its connections (transitions), it theme, its strategic examples, its analogies, its opening, its close, and everything else that creates a powerful, persuasive message.

Then and only then does the Power Point come into play.  The message drives the Power Point selection.  Adaptation to each individual audience helps us make template selections, graphic selections, prioritization of points, when and how to animate the bullets…..IF there needs to be bullets or does a simple, powerful, graphically arresting picture carry the entire meaning (with the leave-behind containing the statistical data).

So, next time you have a high-stakes presentation to prepare, don’t take the habitual, easy approach, i.e., letting the Power Point slides drive your message.  Take charge of the message first, and let the Power Point follow the flow of the message.  And, remember, make sure you differentiate between the Power Point “show” and leave-behind playbill.  When the message drives the production of the Power Point, your message will be hard hitting, persuasive, concise, and on target.  Be the driver; don’t be the passenger.

The term “Crackberry Addict,” now a pop culture term, was coined by Paul Levy, President of Boston’s Beth Israel Medical Center. He confesses to being a recovering “Crackberry Addict” himself. “I know the result of such over reliance —manners disappear, relationships disappear..….people have a craving to get back to it.” (The“it” can be a cell phone or an addiction to checking our text or email messages every 30 seconds.)

Last year Levy quit cold turkey, and he says he has discovered marvelous things: “The sun rises in the morning and sets at night.”

Technology addiction comes in many forms: video games, laptops, I pods, cell phones, IM’ing. We’ve all felt dismissed, frustrated, annoyed and certainly disengaged from the techno addicts surrounding us….or we may look in the mirror and see one blankly staring back at us.

The casualties of the digital age have resulted in the first of “Wii-itis”— intense physical pain from playing the Wii video game system for too long. Physicians are already familiar with “Nintendinitis.”

So what are the symptoms that reveal our shift from responsible, appropriate, and essential use of technology into a state of addiction, and is “addiction” too melodramatic a word to use?

Dr. Kim Young, the Clinical Psychologist who wrote the first book on Internet Addiction,believes there are indeed diagnosable signals: an intense preoccupation and inability to control (much less STOP) use of technology; use of technology as an escape, and, finally, putting technology use above personal relationships.

The other side of the debate asserts we are all addicted to the use of technology, in thesame way we are addicted to the use of cars. They are an essential means to an end.Our companies demand—and we as consumers expect—instant communication and accountability. Not a bad thing.

So it comes down to the choices we make in this area—between responsibility and habitual need and between instant gratification and long-term fulfillment.  In fact, Microsoft has teamed up with etiquette experts at The Finishing Academy to produce a guide to the correct situation, form, and manner of communicating with others in our fast-paced and competitive environment.

We are a connected business world, but many principles of common courtesy and relationship building remain the same, no matter the technology—from cell phone to Blackberry to emails.

Here are three suggestions I will make in order to enhance your Technology Presence:

1. Conscientiously—and consciously–work on your technology “presence.”   Some people’s emails are immediately dismissed because they know what’s coming: a silly joke, a tirade, an irrelevant copy of another email. Communicate strategically and well, no matter the medium. Leave a voice mail with “presence,” use the cell phone and Blackberry discretely and appropriately: turn away from your “screen addiction,” make eye contact, and communicate person to person.

2. Evaluate how people want to be contacted—such as, evaluating generational differences and communication preferences. Emailing or texting certain people will alienate, not communicate. Pick up the phone and talk! It may take longer, but the long-term benefits of relationship building—and showing respect– are inestimable.

3. Think as carefully about a high stakes technology communication as you would about a high stakes presentation or letter. Choose your content and format, know the receiver’s formality expectations and preferences, and edit as if your career depended on it. In fact, it may.

Technology is a given. It is an absolute necessity for our fast paced, competitive businesses and lives. But when it becomes a barrier to our inter-relationships, when bad manners become a habit, when we become addicted to instant and constant communication, we have squandered all of technology’s benefits.

Try going Cold Turkey over a weekend. Some companies have recently instituted “No Email Fridays”—forcing their employees to pick up the phone, walk down the hallway, take someone to lunch. If this very concept causes your heart to palpitate and you just broke out in a full-body sweat, it may be time to re-evaluate your addiction to technology.

A recent AP wire story described a phenomenon called “ringxiety” or fauxcellarm” which occurs when Blackberry and cell phone addicts report feeling vibrations when there are none or feeling the sensation of wearing a cell phone when they are not. “If your hipbone is connected to your Blackberry or your thighbone is connected to your cell phone, the phantom vibrations you are feeling may be coming from your head bone.”

Jake Ward, former press secretary of Sen. Olympia Snowe, “claims to ‘pre-feel’ a new message or call. I’ll feel it, look at it. It’s not vibrating. Then it starts vibrating. I am at one with my Blackberry.”

Some of us are “at one” with our cell phone or our “Ding. You’ve got mail” signal…..perhaps the word “addict” is not too strong?

1. Don’t mistakenly press “Reply to all”—This action could be very embarrassing to you and to “all.”

4. For high-stakes emails, print out the email, and read aloud to catch any tonal “errors.”

5. Get rid of cute fonts and stationery—remember “presence”

6.  If there are 3 emails or text messages (email, response, response to the  response) pick up the phone or use your feet to walk over to the next cubicle.

7. Use “urgent” with great discretion—have your “urgent” be respected.

8. When sending attachments, give the recipient the highlights of the attachment (s).

9. When texting a high-stakes message, indicate you will send a more comprehensive (less abrupt) message by email within the day or that you will call to discuss in more detail.

10. Acknowledge and accept that you may have grown lazy in your choice of  communication techniques and /or you may have become addicted….and that you will make changes.

Since we were in Philly visiting family, my husband and I decided to take a day trip to NYC to see the Tony-award wining play, ‘August: Osage County,” which also won the Pulitzer for Best Play 2008.  Because the setting was in Oklahoma, I was particularly intrigued by this highly acclaimed drama of the year.

Centered around a sickeningly dysfunctional family in NE Oklahoma, it is at points shocking and outrageously funny.  Hailed as “the best drama in decades,” I attended with my expectations set on  number 11 on a scale of 1-10.

I am glad I attended but am very surprised it has won the Pulitzer and believe Eugene O’Neill would be loudly cursing and shaking his fist at the comparison of this play to ‘Long Day’s Journey into Night’ and that Tennesse Williams has been done a great disservice when critics–including the The New York Times drama critic–call ’Osage County the new “Glass Menagerie.”

I must confess, ‘The Glass Menagerie” is my favorite 20thcentury American play-one I taught for many years–, and it, too, centers around a dysfunctional family, long before the word ‘dysfunctional’ was spoken.  But it is a gentle and quiet narrative of people caught by circumstance and the past, with characters who are damaged but likable and tenderly vulnerable.

“Osage County” uses vociferous screaming and dropping the f-bomb at every opportunity to loudly display its dysfuntion, anger, bitterness, disillusionment, and LOUD desperation.

And from an Oklahoma’slanguage point of view, contrary to the playwright’s perception, Oklahomans do not speak with a Mississippi drawl.  I kept wanting to stand up and yell:  “Dialect coach!  Dialect coach!  Anyone need a dialect coach??!!  I would be glad to serve as one!  Right here and now.”

There were some uproarious surprises and some startling discoveries during the course of the play, but much was overplayed, and few were likable characters.  The playwright could not decide if he were doing Carol Burnett’s ‘Mama’s Family” or a serious look at the microscopic family as representative of a world lost at sea, because of addiction, hopelessness, and pure and simple “meanness.”

I’m glad I saw it.  It was very long:  3.5 hours but not tedious.  Act II was the most compelling.  It is worth the two for one tickets we bought, but please do not compare it to Eugene O’Neill or Tennessee Williams, for their sake and mine!

Since announcing the initiation of my new blog, several people–most notably of my generation–have made comment on the “ugly” sound of the spoken word “blog.”  One client suggested a contest to rename the “web log” contraction.  So!  Any ideas?  Instead of BLOG, it could be called a _______________________.  Surely with all the creativity residing in the blog-o-sphere community, we can surface some possible–and funny–possibilities.

I have just finished a book by the author of one of the most impressive books I have read in the last 5 years:  The House of Sand and Fog.  Andre Dubus III has just published ‘The Garden of Last Days,’ an incredibly complex interweaving of potent characters in one of the most compelling ‘environments’ of any fiction I have read:  the two days preceding the Sept. 11 attack on The Twin Towers.

Taking place in Florida, the narrative follows a stripper at the strip club one of the future terrorists has become addicted to, the caretaker of the stripper’s little girl, Franny; the kind hearted bouncer, an achingly lonely man who is injured when he is thrown out of the club…….even the smallest role in the book is handled with care and vibrancy.

BUT this is a depressing read.  It is an agonizing story of loneliness, bad judgment, delusional choices, and an urgent desire to connect with someone, anyone.  The San Antonio Express News had an excellent review of this book last Sunday.  The reviewer said, quite accurately, “You constantly want to shout out to the characters:  ‘No!  Don’t do it!’”

Like The House of Sand and Fog—and the excellent movie adaptation—The Garden of Last Days (yes, full of religious symbolism)—is chiefly about cultural misunderstanding and how being “blind” can lead to desperate and devastating outcomes.  (The final scene with Ben Kingsley in The House of Sand and Fog haunts me to this day.)

It is a page turner, but it is also a ‘workout’ because your muscles will be tight and tense as you read.  It never let me go; it is long—555 pp.—but it is worth it and it flies by.  I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough, but I didn’t want to look at the next page, as well.  The conflict between ‘read on’ and ‘don’t read on’ is palpable.

Wonderful book, if you can handle it.   If you handled The House of Sand and Fog, you can do it!

In the last 3-5 years, I have witnessed an enormous backlash against the use of PowerPoint in presentations.  The PowerPoint Pendulum has swung from “Isn’t this neat?!” to “Oh, no, not another boring Power Point!”

I use the phrase “Death by PowerPoint” to describe that comatose suspension between life and death while you wait for a Power Point presentation to conclude (“Stop! Stop! Please stop!).

Some companies have even gone so far as to ban all PowerPoint presentations, telling their managers to “Just tell me your recommendations and get on with it.”

The reasons for this Power Point backlash are many, but one in particular stands out: people hate being read to and nearly every presenter does just that. They throw the entire “script” up on the screen and monotonously read every single line, every single word to their audience, who are sitting in the dark….secretly checking email messages on their Blackberries.

Speakers inflict this sadistic suffering upon their audience for 4 main reasons:
1. They are petrified of public speaking and use Power Point as a security blanket
2. They don’t know any better
3. That’s the way it’s done at their company; no one knows any better
4. It’s easy and it’s safe.

It takes hard work, time, discipline, courage, and an understanding of just what engages an audience to produce an interesting, unique, and creative PowerPoint presentation.

Lee Gomes, business writer at the Wall Street Journal, says that “While PowerPoint has served as the metronome for countless crisp presentations, it has also allowed an endless expanse of dimwit ideas to be dressed up with graphical respectability.” Yale graphics guru, Edward Tufte, scathingly asserts that PowerPoint “elevates format over content, betraying an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch.”

Robert Gaskins, one of the two creators of the PowerPoint concept (the other, Dennis Austin) believes Tufte’s criticisms are spot on. They have “no patience with cubicle warriors who, in the guise of doing actual work, spend endless hours fiddling with fonts!  ” They like telling the joke that the best way to paralyze an opposition army is to ship it PowerPoint and thereby contaminate its decision making.

A New Yorker magazine included a cartoon showing a job interview in hell: “I need someone well versed in the art of torture,” the interviewer says. “Do you know PowerPoint?”

So my point has been made: PowerPoint presentations are mind numbing, soul deadening, spirit sapping exercises in staying awake. Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post writes that this energy draining essence of PowerPoint was captured perfectly in a spoof of the Gettysburg Address by computer whiz Peter Norvig of Google.

It featured Abe Lincoln fumbling with his computer: “Just a second while I get this connection to work. Do I press this button here? Function-F7?” He collapses his speech into six slides, complete with bar chart depicting four score and seven years. (See sidebar for a sample PowerPoint slide from the Gettysburg address) But it doesn’t have to be this way!

I believe the day will come when an audience collectively thinks: “Oh, Boy, a PowerPoint presentation!” Incredulous? Let me explain. Here are Three PowerPoint Rules to help make your PowerPoint presentations
invigorating and refreshing.

Rule #1—Remember first and foremost that readers are not the same as listeners. The brain uses differing parts to process the written word vs. the spoken word. Speeches and Power Points are meant for listeners, NOT readers. So prepare a feast for your listeners’ eyes and ears. Think of the audience as consumers. Use color—with consideration of your audience—unique design, pictures instead of data and bullet points, and “sell” your ideas to your consumers.

Stand with the screen to your left, so the audience can scan your material from left to right, the way this culture is taught to read. Keep your feet pointed toward your audience, so your face, with its voice and expressions, can reveal your passion and commitment to these ideas. Be an expressive proponent of your material, not a deadly reader of lengthy sentences meant for English Comp 101.

Rule #2—Do not make yourself part of your audience. You are the actor, the director of the play, the set designer, and the choreographer. Symphony conductors do not sit behind the symphony. Neither should you turn off the lights—nappy time—sit at the back of the room with your computer, and send out a disembodied voice that drones ”Next……” over and over and over…… Take your position up front as the “owner” of this message, engage your audience with your entire being, and make the PowerPoint part of your “presentation presence.”

Rule #3—Audiences don’t need or want everything you’ve got. (No one is as interested
in your wedding pictures as you are.) So the presenter should develop 3 different documents:

Personal notes, to be seen only by the speaker and used as a reminder of the topics and key points.
Illustrative slides, which illustrate the major points and help motivate the listener and sell the message.
Handouts or leave-behinds, where the speaker puts the references, data, the appendices to the talk. Some may actually study these; some may glance at them; many will toss them. But they are there, revealing the background work that went into your engaging presentation.

So is it PowerPoint that’s bad?

No. Bad speakers are bad. Bad Power Points just make them worse. Obviously, then, there are two fixes:

1) Become a better speaker

2) Quit taking the easy way out with Power Points.

Next time, surprise your audience with an energetic, engaging presentation, which incorporates visually appealing PowerPoint slides. Think of your PowerPoint “show” as theatre. Most PowerPoint “shows” would close on opening night. Craft your set, stage the lighting, use dramatic focus, create a narrative flow (an impressive seamlessness), and end BIG.

In summary, you are everything from costume designer and tech crew to janitor. This is a reality all presenters must acknowledge, accept, and prepare for. After all, PowerPoint is the messenger, not the message. So don’t kill the messenger.

Mary E. Rauch is a communication strategist, presentation consultant, and public speaker. She lives in San Antonio and can be reached through her web site.
www.maryrauch.com