I’m sitting in Las Vegas waiting for my plane to arrive to take me home. The screen says “Pos Wth Dly” Folks are curious what that means. (I did Cryptograms as a kid so I figured it says Possible Weather Delay.) A mom here is a little upset. Visibly shaken she worries about getting home to pick up her two daughters.
She steps up to the desk as a young man steps behind it. She waits for a moment. he doesn’t acknowledge her, he types at the computer.
It is clear from her face she is a little emotional.
She finally interupts his typing and not looking and asks sweetly, almost sheepishly, “um, are we leaving as scheduled.”
He doesn’t even look up.
“Maam, I haven’t even signed into the computer yet. I will make an announcement when I do.”
Really? This is my first time flying Virgin America and I do admit I had some high expectations.
I suppose the RED means embarrass your customers and your brand by lacking human feeling.
aaah. he just gave the announcement. He did a great job educating us though on WHY the weather delay happens in SFO. That he did a great job of. Really, he did a great job. I just wish he would see the people in front of him and say it different. “I’m checking into it…. I’ll make an announcement in just a second… promise….”

A microphone made him nicer and approachable. For those of us sitting around him… we don’t like him because he was rude to a worried mom.

Richard - teach your people to reduce anonymity.

I have a funky house. It is a tri-level built over 5 decades by humans who did not understand what a straight line is. We sit perched on top of a mountain with mountains behind us. We love it although we lean a little….
On the stairs is a ledge. I don’t know why it is there. It is at about eye level when descending the stairs at about 30% down. Over a year ago I noticed 3 pennies on the ledge. I laughed that my son must have thrown them there. I left them there.

Right up above the ledge is a collage. Ten years ago in a class I was asked to collage my greatest wish. My greatest wish was to have babies. Lots of them. It is a pretty collage that is obviously about children.
Years ago I showed it to sebastian and told him what it was. He asks about it every so often and every morning we walk past it on the way to breakfast.
Last Saturday, we were rushing to go to Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and Kiva… mommy and Sebastian’s favorite treat. On the way down the stairs, Sebastian asked me to sit down on the stairs.
“I need to show you something important Mom.”  This is code in our house for, sit your butt down and pay attention.

“Do you see the pennies Momma?”

Yes, honey. They have been there for a while.

“I know. I put them there when I was two so you could have 3 more babies. They go with the wish picture you made. I will be one of 4.”

Gulp.

My kid knows how to stop me in my tracks….  Luckily he counts our cat as one… the dog we will get when he is 7 as two…. do mice count as 3?

Okay.  So I just like to write cute stories about my kid on my blog.  They aren’t always ANYTHING to do with communication.  Although, this one is.  Years ago I noticed that parents had a tone and a ’spot’ when they were about to ‘discipline’ a kid.  I watched as kids reduced their listening because they knew what was coming.

So

I decided I was going to mix it up.  Make it so Sebastian didn’t know what I was going to say.  Sometimes, an important talk is about a grandpa story.  SOmetimes, it is about feeding the cat.  Sometimes, it is about beautiful moments he and I will never forget.

Most of us teach people not to listen to us.  We do preambles that put the person on notice that the information about to come is going to hurt.   Instead, just say it.  Be IN IT.  Not about it.

There.  Kid stories that indulge the mom and um.. do something else.

Are you a fundraiser? Are you spending time trying to figure out how to convert goosebumps into dollars for the cause you believe in?

I attended a fundraising lunch a couple of months ago that did a fairly hardcore ask at the end of the lunch. I gave them money. I was sort of put on the spot in the moment and the ask came when I had tears in my eyes. So, of course, I donated some cash to the incredible work they were doing.

And today. I do not remember the name of their cause. They converted my goosebumps into cash instead of evangelism and cash. When fundraising, figure out a way to make it sticky.

“Stories are the transactional medium of relationship in our culture.” I said that once. It was a futile attempt to make my economics degree mean something in my training world. Every human on the planet tells stories to their friends, business associates etc. Stories are how things are sticky for us.

When fundraising - help people with repeatable ideas.  When we repeat things we become part of the belief system of these things.  Of course, we want to ask people to donate.  What we don’t want to do is make them feel forced to donate.

I give a ton of money to causes who have never asked me for money.  What they DID do is tell me the stories that made me believe in what they believed in.

Start telling repeatable stories about what really matters to you.  Ask people who believe in what you do to help with the cause.  You will notice yoru fundraising increases not ONE by ONE… it will be like a Fabrege commercial… they will tell two friends.. and so on and so on.

Most of the humans who come to my company for public speaking have something to sell. Themselves, a product, a cause.

Most people do not like to be sold to. You don’t. I don’t. Yet, most speakers believe the way to sell what they are selling is it directly sell it. To teach the audience something that the audience CAN NOT do without them.

Bad. Not effective. Don’t do it.

Instead, teach the audience something they can do themselves, without you. Educate them, give a REAL take away value and figure out a way to give them a take away so they will remember how they got it.  Honor the persons time.  Make that the goal - not selling.

If you are a consultant, this means maybe giving away some of your secret sauce. Don’t worry, you will make more. Example: What I am doing right now. My company makes money when we use our intellectual property to wow our clients who hire us. The reality is, you don’t HAVE to hire my team for your next speech if you read my book and practice what is in the blog. The reality is once you hit it out of the park with the free stuff you get - you are more likely to want to know what else there is.   If I am taking your time right now in reading this, I’d better GIVE you some value.   Something tangible.

If you are a politician, this means giving away some of your personal history and perspective. Example: Instead of talking about the need for police and funding for police. (all politicians do that) Think about educating the audience in a different way. Think about it for a second. More police on the beat is expensive and one level of context. Another level is this: Let’s think of an average police officer. Do you think when police officer goes to the grocery store when she is OFF work she stops being a police officer? When she is walking the dog? Washing her car? If we really want our streets to be safe, we need to create affordable housing for police and fire. If more police live in our neighborhoods, the neighborhood will be safer. Right now, many of our police officers live in Daly City. (find some statistics on this) Educate in detail rather than talk about high level of context stuff.

If you are a cause, get off your obvious soap box and reach more people.  The environment.   The moment we make someone feel bad about the car they drive we reduce listening.  We create an “us and them” mentality where to them we are THEM.  (god, does that make any sense at all?)   Imagine educating an audience on what they CAN do for their own benefit.. not to save the world.   FOr example:  we are the most innovative country on the planet.  Think about what we have invented:  the telephone, electricity, the internet… we CAN figure out a more efficient, inexpensive, low impact way to get off oil.  Let’s imagine we don’t care about the planet .. it will be the next big boom for our country.   There is money to be had here - this is a US  (U.S.) initiative- not a democratic initiative.

Oh, and when teaching.  Please avoid being obvious.  The worst thing a CEO can do is tell a story about WORKING REALLY HARD to get his team to WORK HARD.   Give them whiplash a little so they don’t know what is coming.

Hope this helps.  Typos and all!

I hope you can come tonight.

I am very proud of this project that I helped with 13 years ago.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/03/04/DD4F1CAD66.DTL

“..I’d like to say something to the kids all around the world…………………Over the past few years, I have been a role model for young people. Over the past couple of months the world has become aware that this role model has some questionable character flaws that are shameful and that I need to personally work on. I am speaking right now to the young people … be careful who you make your role model. Just because a person can swing a club does not make them worthy of your attention. There is a person inside of you that is so much stronger than I am and deserve your admiration. Words do not matter now. Behavior does. I am committed to being as good a man, a husband and a father, as I am a golfer.”

When a famous person messes up (and I think most people agree Tiger has messed up) there is this tremendous opportunity to reach out to people and teach something. Tiger Woods has enough money – his legacy could be to get kids to focus their adoration on themselves instead of some guy with a stick.

I wish PR people would take public admissions to the next level - transformation for all of us not just mea culpa for one of us.