Since Autumn of 2021, I began teaching a course for the Stanford Continuing Studies Program (CSP) designed for people who work in tech to make their ideas spread. The below resources are for alumni of the class to revisit my slides and to explore additional readings beyond the course content.
Overview
I designed COM 88: High-Impact Communication to Advance Your Career in Tech with two major goals in mind (both of which are stated in the title of the course): 1. to increase communication effectiveness, and 2. to move a career in tech forward. The course covered a wide range of topics from non-verbal communication to storytelling to the role of empathy and vulnerability in the workforce. All of the lessons were focused around strategies specific to careers in tech--and many of the class principles were illustrated through stories of tech industry giants.
Below you can find the course syllabus, the slides I taught from, and a large number of additional resources for exploring the course concepts in greater depth.
I offer my sincerest appreciation to the 30 trailblazing students who enrolled in the first iteration of the course in Autumn, 2021. The course went over so well that CSP has already expressed interest in continuing the course into the future--I'm excited to work with the next cohort of students. Thank you for your continual engagement and your commitment to your own growth--I found myself inspired by you every single week.
Contents
- Syllabus
- 1: Delivery Techniques
- 2: Talking Tech (Interesting & Informing)
- 3: Brainstorming Creatively & Organizing Effectively
- 4: Design Theory
- 5: Storytelling
- 6: Listening, Giving/Receiving Feedback, and Vulnerability
- 7: Sparking Peak Performances
- 8: Bringing Your Best
Syllabus
Week 1: Non-Verbal Communication
Concepts Covered:
Virtual Presentations:
Posture - often (but not always) seated. Sitting straight up. Shoulders back. Open body position.
Gestures - be aware of the rectangle of your webcam. Make big gestures within this space. Gestures often have to be higher than we're used to (at the shoulder, neck, or even head level). You may need to slow down your gestures because of a slow frame rate from Zoom.
Eye contact - make eye contact with the web cam. Periodically break eye contact to avoid a perception of "staring down" the audience.
In-Person Presentations:
Posture - often (but not always) standing. Feet shoulder-width apart, weight evenly distributed, hands either at the side or folded at about the midriff level when not gesturing.
Gestures - Make gestures BIG. If hands rest at side, then gesture above the waist. If folded at the midriff level, imagine a bubble around your body and pop the bubble with each gesture.
Eye Contact - 2-4 seconds per audience member. Make eye contact seem random.
Both types of Presentations:
Voice - Use Power, Pace, Pitch, and Pauses to be a dynamic speaker. Power (volume) should be set to mood, you may err on the side of being slightly too loud. Pace also adjusts with mood of the speech. Pitch should be dynamic and if you notice your pitch creeping up due to nervousness, bring it back down. Pauses can be for dramatic effect--get comfortable using non-verbal pauses (rather than filler words) during formal presentations.
Resources:
Articles
Delivery Strategies (Note: this is a fuller description of the outline of the strategies above)
Delivery Strategies (Matt Vassar, 2011)
Nonverbal strategies pertaining to presentation
How to Look and Sound Confident During a Presentation (Carmine Gallo, Harvard Business Review, 2019)
A Review of Big Data on Presentation Success Confirms The Importance of Stance/Gestures/Voice/Eye Contact
A Big Data Approach to Public Speaking (Matt Abrahams, Stanford Graduate Business School, 2016)
Strategies for virtual presentations
How to Give a Webinar Presentation (Dorie Clark, Harvard Business Review, 2018)
Books:
Building confidence so you naturally exude confident nonverbals
Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges (Amy Cuddy, Little Brown Spark, 2015)
Nonverbals used for influence (chapter 2, in particular, gives good advice on how nonverbals are perceived)
The Like Switch (Jack Schafer & Marvin Karlins, Atria Books, 2015)
Week 2: Talking Tech (Interesting & Informing)
Concepts Covered:
Three quick tips for overcoming anxiety:
NOTE: Of course, there are many more strategies for overcoming anxiety. If you'd like to discuss even more strategies, just reach out to me and I'm happy to share even more. But these are the three we practiced during class:
1. The Illusion of Transparency: because we are so attuned to our inner-state, we tend to think the audience can pick up on it too. In truth, many of your signs of nervousness are invisible. The audience can't see your faster-than-average heart rate--nor your sweating palms--nor the butterflies in your stomach. Just being aware that the audience cannot see your nerves can help you feel more confident in your presentations.
2. Visualization. Joe Ayres and Tim Hopf of Washington State University wanted to find a way to calm pre-speech nerves on your own without need anybody to intervene. They found it through visualization. When visualizing, make it vivid and positive.
3. "I am excited." Research from Allison Wood Brooks at Harvard University found a remarkably simple intervention to overcoming nerves. Just say "I am excited" before your presentations. Not only did speakers report feeling less nervous after saying these three simple words, but audiences reported the speaker as more excited, less nervous, and giving overall higher quality speeches.
Three quick tips for delivering feedback:
1. Frame feedback in a growth mindset. In both praise and criticism, make sure that you put the recipient of your feedback in a growth mindset (or a belief that their skills can be improved if they put in the effort). For instance, if delivering praise, instead of saying "You naturally are a good programmer," you might say "I can tell you worked hard to make your code so elegant." If delivering criticism, instead of saying "You are a soft speaker," you might say "You spoke a bit softly when you delivered your speech, but you can make yourself easier to hear if you remind yourself before the speech to speak a little louder."
2. Pair criticisms with concrete steps to improvement. Once you deliver your criticism, the recipient is hyper-attentive to what you say next. Make sure that your next words are actionable steps they can take to grow. For instance, if you say "Your code is hard for your colleagues to read," you might follow it up with "Could you leave a few more comments in your code to make it easier to understand?"
3. Remember that praise motivates--and should outnumber criticisms. There's no exact praise-to-criticism ratio and different studies have found different results. But most have found that for optimal performance within a team, the ratio is around 3 or 4 pieces of praise for every 1 piece of criticism. Remember to offer praise in addition to criticisms. Your praises don't have to be lengthy--just quick compliments to colleagues in passing can help to keep your praise outnumbering your criticisms.
Talking Tech:
NOTE: This is not a checklist, nor an exhaustive list. Just a few methods of interesting and informing to get your brain moving. You may use any of these as tools in a toolkit for your presentations. You may use some of the tools at different times, depending on your audience and goals for each presentation.
Interesting the audience:
Delivery: if you don't seem interested in your own talk, what's the chance your audience will be? (See last week's optional resources for more on delivery and nonverbal communication.)
Look to the One: just as Mother Teresa was more motivated when she looked not to data but to a single individual, you can motivate your audience toward action by explaining your concepts through the lens of how a single user of your product/technology might benefit.
Relevance/WIIFY (What's In It For You): consider the audience's values, priorities, background, what they know, what they don't know. Make the presentation highly relevant to your audience. You may give the same presentation to two different audience and it will be completely different because of each audience's needs.
Background: supplying background information in just the right way can build a mystery (e.g., rings of Saturn).
Engagement: actively engaging the audience through live demos, role plays, or discussions can make them a part of the speech.
Informing the audience:
Features vs. Benefits: an Intel® Core™ i7 processor is a feature. A benefit is that I'll have more laughs when watching cat videos on YouTube because my laptop's battery life will last longer. While you can certainly talk about features of your technical work, make sure you break them down to benefits that are compelling to your audience. Keep asking yourself "Why does this matter?" until you get to that benefit.
Break down components: describe the whole of a process or object and what its overall function is. Then break it down to the key parts that contribute to that function (e.g., a tunnel boring machine creates tunnels for us to drive through on the road. The head of the tunnel boring machine drills into the surface of the Earth, while the body of the tunnel boring machine solidifies the Earth around it so that the tunnel won't collapse when the tunnel boring machine withdraws.)
Concreteness/examples: abstractions (diagrams, blueprints, models, etc.) work great when everybody is familiar with the abstraction. If not, break everything down into concrete terms. (Beth Bechky's research on engineers and assemblers: communication breakdowns were most likely to break down when engineers used abstractions such as blueprints instead of concretely coming down and showing which screw to turn to fix a broken machine.)
Analogies/comparisons: it's easier to teach an audience through something they do know than something they don't. (e.g., a crwth is like a violin, but rectangular-shaped and with rounded corners. By drawing on something you do know, a violin, I can get you to better understand an instrument you don't know, a crwth. You can now better picture how a crwth might sound and how it's played.)
Resources:
Overcoming anxiety:
Transforming stress through pre-speech reframing, breathing, and visualization:
The Upside of Your Public Speaking Jitters (Allison Shapira, Harvard Business Review, 2020)
Strategies for overcoming public speaking nervousness:
How to Conquer the Fear of Public Speaking (Theo Tsaousides, Psychology Today, 2017)
"I am excited" can reframe nervous energy into powerful speaking
Can Three Words Turn Anxiety Into Success? (Olga Khazan, The Atlantic, 2016)
Tips for overcoming the illusion of transparency (and its close cousin, the spotlight effect)
The One Reason You Shouldn't Obsess Over Your Mistakes (Melody Wilding, Forbes, 2016)
Giving Feedback:
Giving feedback that reduces stress and promotes growth
Make Getting Feedback Less Stressful (Ed Batista, Harvard Business Review, 2014)
Pairing constructive criticisms with concrete steps for improvement
Actionable Feedback Is Essential for Growth (Starr Sackstein, EdWeek, 2016)
Making your feedback SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, Time-Based)
Giving S.M.A.R.T. Feedback to Millennials (Karl Moore, Forbes, 2014)
How framing feedback from a "growth mindset" motivates improvement
How Your Mindset Determines Your Success, Well-being, And Love Life (Drake Baer, Business Insider, 2014)
Making praise outnumber criticisms
5 morale-boosting strategies to try right now (Molly Hellerman-Atlassian, Fast Company, 2020)
Talking Tech:
Strategies for interesting and informing your audience
Talking Tech [28-minute podcast] (Matt Vassar, 2019)
Interesting and informing your audience
Technical Information (Matt Vassar, 2012)
Considering Your Audience/Making Your Talk Relevant to Your Audience
Scientific presenters need to consider their audience when presenting
Prioritize the needs of the audience when giving a presentation (David Rubenstein, Nature, 2018)
Connecting your purpose with your audience
A Road Map for Preparing Your Next Tech Talk (Melissa Marshall, Society of Women Engineers, 2018)
Building a Mystery/Situational Interest:
Technical and scientific communication is more interesting when it builds a mystery
What's the Best Secret Device for Engaging Student Interest? The Answer is in the Title (Robert Cialdini, 2005)
Why Gaps in Our Knowledge Provoke Curiosity
The Itch of Curiosity (Jonah Lehrer, Wired, 2010)
How to Provoke Curiosity through Knowledge Gaps
How to Stimulate Curiosity (Annie Murphy Paul, Time, 2013)
"Look to the One"/Choosing a Single Person as the Star of Your Story
Why we're moved to act when a story is told about a single individual (and not broad data trends):
Save the Darfur Puppy (Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times, 2007)
Bring Them on the Journey (Audience Involvement)
Strategies for engaging the audience in group problem-solving
How to Get People to Actually Participate in Virtual Meetings (Justin Hale and Joseph Grenny, Harvard Business Review, 2020)
"Bobby McFerrin Plays the Audience" is a fun TED Talk that uses audience involvement to teach about music theory (pentatonic scales)
Watch Me Play... The Audience (Bobby McFerrin, TED, 2009)
Features vs. Benefits
The iPhone succeeded in part because of its focus on benefits and how it could solve problems for the users
Features Versus Benefits: Why The iPhone Succeeded—And Google Glass Failed (Chuck Swoboda, Forbes, 2020)
Strategies for approaching with benefits rather than leading with features
Why People Don’t Buy Products–They Buy Better Versions Of Themselves (Belle Beth Cooper, Fast Company, 2014)
Concreteness (and Using Analogies to Make Unfamiliar Ideas More Concrete)
How concreteness and analogies can make your talks more accessible
Effective science communication deconstructed (Letitia Henville, University Affairs, 2020)
How a well-placed analogy can inspire
Scientists Need to Talk to the Public (Esther Ngumbi, Scientific American, 2019)
What is the Higgs boson? Some fun analogies that describe this building block of the universe
The Best Analogies Scientists and Journalists Use To Explain the Higgs Boson (J. Bryan Lowder, Slate, 2012)
Recommended Books
Overcoming Nervousness
Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges (Amy Cuddy, Little Brown Spark, 2015)
Giving Feedback and Coaching
HBR Guide to Coaching Employees (Harvard Business Review, 2014)
Growth Mindset
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Carol Dweck, Random House, 2006)
Technical presentations
The Craft of Scientific Presentations (Michael Alley, 2013)
^ And if you are curious about technical writing, Michael Alley also has a book on writing, too: The Craft of Scientific Writing (Michael Alley, 2018)
Building lasting relationships (although written about long-term romantic relationships, there is also practical advice for relationships with colleagues too)
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (John Gottman & Nan Silver, Harmony, 2015)
Week 3: Brainstorming Creatively & Organizing Effectively
Concepts Covered
Creatively Brainstorming:
Creativity is something that anybody can tap into. Two different types of creative thinking:
- Generative thinking: coming up with a large quantity of ideas
- Analogical thinking: approaching a familiar problem from an unfamiliar angle
Generative thinking:
- Generate a large quantity of ideas
- Dean Simonton found that those who achieve creative success in the arts and sciences (Edison, Einstein, Mozart, Picasso, etc.) aren't necessarily any better at coming up with creative ideas--they are willing to pursue a large quantity of ideas.
- Mind mapping is one tool for increasing your quantity of ideas:
* Write your topic in the center of the mind map, then create branches from into ideas that spring into your mind. Keep your pen moving the whole time. Do not judge any ideas. Freely associate.
* You may mind map in words or images.
Analogical thinking:
- Use your thoughts or knowledge from a completely different domain and apply them to the current problem
- László Bíró, the inventor of the ballpoint pen, got the idea while watching a wet soccer ball roll across asphalt
- Steve Jobs's inspiration for the Genius Bar at the Apple Store came from observing the concierge desk at a Ritz Carlton hotel.
- Random object technique:
* Choose a random object. You can just look around the room for one. Or pull up a random object generator such as: https://perchance.org/object
* Once you've selected your random object, do an entire brainstorm around this topic
* After completing your brainstorm, put your mind map and your "random object" brainstorm next to each other. Look for associations between the two brainstorms and let your brain wander to find connections between your current problem and the brainstorm.
Generative thinking and analogical thinking can combine to be even more powerful than either strategy alone. When we had participants randomly assigned to four groups (control group, mind map group, random object group, and combined (mind map + random object) group) to brainstorm a speech, judges asked to select the most creative speech chose participants from the "combined (mind map + random object)" group more than any of the other three groups... combined.
Organizing Your Speech:
NOTE: this is not the only way to organize a speech. There are many effective ways to organize a speech. But this particular framework is effective--and has proven to be effective for literally thousands of years (going back to Aristotle). Especially when delivering highly technical concepts, it sometimes helps to have a simple and familiar organizational structure for your audience to follow. Here it is:
Hook - Draws the audience in with something compelling
Thesis - State in 1 or 2 sentences what the talk will cover.
Preview - Specifically reference the 3 (or so) body points to come and use concise labels for each of the three body points (e.g., "Today I'll talk about: 1. the past, 2. the present, and 3. the future").
Body 1 (Make sure when you move into Body 1, you specifically refer to it by the concise label you created in the preview, e.g., "The Past")
Body 2 (Make sure when you move into Body 2, you specifically refer to it by the concise label you created in the preview, e.g., "The Present")
Body 3 (Make sure when you move into Body 3, you specifically refer to it by the concise label you created in the preview, e.g., "The Future")
Review - Remind the audience of the three points you discussed over the course of your presentation (e.g., "Today we've discussed the past, the present, and the future.")
Finale - Bring it home with something that leaves the audience continuing to think about and spreading your message even after the speech ends
* Make sure to have organic transitions that seamlessly move you from one section of the speech to the next in between each of the above categories.
Resources:
Creativity:
Creatively Selecting an Intriguing Angle for Your Speech Topic
Choosing a Topic + Tapping into Creativity [27-minute podcast] (Matt Vassar, 2019)
Summary of Dean Keith Simonton's findings on how creativity comes from generating a large quantity of ideas
Why Creativity Is a Numbers Game (Scott Barry Kaufman, Scientific American, 2015)
How approaching a problem from a different angle spurs innovative insight
Great Innovators Think Laterally (Ian Gonsher and Deb Mills-Scofield, Harvard Business Review, 2013)
Strategies for choosing a new angle for examining something familiar
The Most Valuable Skill In Difficult Times Is Lateral Thinking—Here’s How To Do It (Phil Lewis, Forbes, 2020)
A fascinating look into how the artist Christopher Niemann uses random objects to spark creativity
How Does Christoph Niemann Make Art Look Effortless? With A Lot Of Work (NPR, 2016)
Strategies for mind mapping, with software packages listed at the end if you prefer digital mind mapping
Tools of Creativity: Mind Maps (RobinB Creative, Medium, 2017)
Three quick strategies both to spark generative and analogical thinking
Three New Ways to Solve a Problem (Rob Sheffield, Chartered Management Institute, 2019)
Group brainstorms (brainwriting):
Why traditional brainstorming crushes creativity
Brainstorming Doesn't Work; Try This Technique Instead (Rebecca Greenfield, Fast Company, 2014)
Brainwriting as a solution to traditional brainstorming
The Demons Of Traditional Brainstorming Are Slain With Brainwriting (Will Burns, Forbes, 2016)
The "no talk" meeting as a solution to brainstorming
A professor who's spent years studying effective management says some of the best meetings involve almost no talking (Shana Lebowitz and Sherin Shebu, Business Insider, 2019)
Strategies for collecting ideas and voting after completing brainstorming as a group
Solving Brainstorming's Loudmouth Problem (Drake Baer, Fast Company, 2013)
Speech Organization Strategies:
Organizing your speech
Organization Strategies (Matt Vassar, 2012)
Recommended Books:
Dean Keith Simonton on creativity and genius
Origins of Genius (Dean Keith Simonton, 1999)
More from Simonton, but specifically on creativity in science
Creativity in Science
Mind Mapping
The Mind Map Book (Tony Buzan, 1996)
Week 4: Design Theory
Concepts Covered:
Considering Your Audience
Just as you consider your audience for your content, you should also consider your audience when crafting visuals
* For specialized audiences, you may put relatively denser information on a slide knowing that they can parse through familiar information quicker.
* For general audiences, you'll want to simplify.
Five principles from Richard Mayer's multimedia learning theory to increase your design effectiveness:
Multimedia learning: people learn more when they hear a message with a visual accompaniment.
Modality principle: people learn more when they hear a message than when they read a message. Put another way: if you have an opportunity to give a speech, take it! Your message will be better remembered.
Redundancy principle: people learn less when there's a textual duplication of what you're saying. Why? The brain gets overwhelmed when it's reading and hearing two slightly different versions of the exact same message. It's more effective to remove as much text as possible from your slides. Consider the difference between these two slides from real life venture capital pitches:
(Text heavy: via LinkedIn)
(More visual: via OpenDoor)
Coherence principle: people learn a lot more when there's a lot less on your slide. Nancy Duarte, the brilliant designer behind Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth recommends that the audience should be able to take in the entirety of your slide in only 3 seconds--then return their attention to you, the presenter. Consider these two slides:
(text and diagram overload: via Square)
(simplicity: via Trym)
Segmentation principle: you might object, though, that you have a lot of information to cover--and that's totally fine. Just separate it across multiple slides. People learn more when information is chunked rather than delivered all at once, so stick to one idea per slide. Consider these two slides:
(Many ideas all crammed into a single slide, via Moz)
(One crisp idea indicating potential growth opportunity (total addressable market), via Airbnb):
Keeping visuals simple and efficient:
Diagrams are often better than bullet points. Consider the logical relationship among the ideas expressed and you can design visuals people can take in quicker. Consider these two slides:
Cyclical relationship expressed via bullet points:
Cyclical relationship expressed with a diagram:
Charts should be easy to take in. Consider the following two visuals:
No colors, too many lines, not clear what data to pay attention to:
Color added, lines removed, key data point highlighted:
You might also create a slide around your key recommendation:
Graphs should also be simplified to help audiences take in data quickly. Consider the following two visuals:
Skewed perspective via 3-D (57% takes up far more space than 57% of the graphic, and the 17% looks smaller than the 13% right next to it). Four shades of blue is hard to read. Legend off to the side.
Removed 3-D. Colors changed. Legend directly on graph:
Make sure to highlight your message. If your argument is that money should be shifted toward fun activities for team morale, you might point out how currently relatively very little is devoted to this now:
Resources:
David Hooker, lead creative at Prezi and former technical writer, makes the case for why the right visual at the right time makes ideas flourish
The Importance of Visual Literacy [17-minute video] (David Hooker, TED, 2017)
Quick tips for crafting compelling visuals
3 Steps to Better Presentation Visuals [2-minute video] (Harvard Business Review, 2015)
Summary of Richard Mayer's Multimedia Learning Theory
How to optimize students' learning? Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning [5-minute video] (DiscoMedia, 2014)
Why your PowerPoint slides should be simple
Do Your Slides Pass the Glance Test? (Nancy Duarte, Harvard Business Review, 2012)
Strategies for presenting data
Present Your Data Like a Pro (Joel Schwartzberg, Harvard Business Review, 2020)
VA Presentations
VA Strategies [40-minute video] (Matt Vassar, 2019)
VA Presentations
VA Strategies (Matt Vassar, 2011)
Recommended Books:
Multimedia Learning Theory
Multimedia Learning (Richard Mayer, 2009)
Nancy Duarte design principles
slide:ology (Nancy Duarte, 2008)
Week 5: Storytelling
Concepts Covered:
Why tell stories in technical presentations?
Makes your ideas 12.5x more memorable: crime statistics vs. storytelling in Chip Heath's Stanford GSB class
Makes your ideas 102x more persuasive:
- When presented with facts we don't like or find inconvenient, we get dig in our heels, get defensive, and think of how to disprove them. (If my scale doesn't give me a reading I like, I adjust my weight, move the scale around, and try to find any reason why it's wrong.)
- When presented with stories, we don't have the same defensive reaction
- Ignaz Semmelweis came up with a life-saving intervention that was effective and inexpensive--but facts alone couldn't get people to take action.
Your "vehicle" for technical storytelling (CAR):
* Context - Where are we now? Where is the company? What is the research you were commissioned to do and why?
* Action - What do you recommend based on your findings?
* Result - What do your findings suggest will happen as a result of your recommendation? Will you create revenue? Will you avoid losses?
"The Elephant" and "The Rider"
A major finding in the 1980s in neuroscience is that our emotions are critical in rational decision-making. Antonio Damasio researched a patient named Elliot who, due to surgery that removed a tumor in his frontal lobe, was rendered unable to feel emotions. All of his rational abilities were intact--and he scored off the charts when it came to tests of cognitive abilities--but he could not feel anything anymore. Show him emotional images (graphically grotesque or sexually suggestive) and brain scans revealed that he felt nothing. Being highly rational and unable to feel also left him incapable of making decisions.
Metaphorically, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt describes these two parts of the brain as "the elephant" and "the rider":
* The elephant = emotional part of the brain. It's easily aroused and when it moves, it moves with a LOT of force.
* The rider = thankfully, we also have a "rider" sitting atop the elephant, which represents the logical part of our brain. Most of the time, it can pull the elephant back and ensure it doesn't do something we'll later regret.
To persuade an audience, you must tap into both parts of the brain: use the force of the elephant to arouse your audience into action and then, once motivated to act, appeal to the rational rider to move toward a logical conclusion.
A quick review of three concepts you've already learned in the class and how they apply to storytelling:
"Look at the One":
"If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will." - a quote often attributed to Mother Teresa.
In a study at Carnegie Mellon, when participants were confronted with statistics on extreme poverty in Africa, they donated less than when they were given the story of a single girl.
Craft your story around individual characters that represent actual data trends. The characters may be fictional for the purposes of making your story more concrete (HP used a fictional family in its pitch to Disney to show how an actual family might interact with HP technology at Disneyland.)
Consider your audience:
Do reconnaissance. Before a presentation with a decision maker, ask people on the same team and others who presented before this person. Some questions you might ask:
What are their priorities for our organization?
What are some current projects they're working on?
How much time do I need to get to the point?
Do they sit back and listen throughout the presentation? Or interrupt with questions?
As a generalization, most decision makers are very busy and need a quick, compelling message that encourage them to think deeper about your idea.
Simplify:
We previously discussed how when you're dealing with complex and technical information, it helps to present it simply (both in your organization of your speech and in your visual aids). But there's one other place where simplicity should be used...
Avoid $100 words--they're often vague with each person having a slightly different interpretation of the same word. Even if they aren't, though, making your audience stop and think about what the word means gets in the way of them focusing on your core message. Instead of "ethnographic research," say "we watched what people did." Instead of "behavioral analysis," say "we measured what got people to download our app."
Resources:
Why Storytelling Makes Your Technical Content More Memorable and Persuasive:
Putting your technical knowledge in a story activates more regions of the brain--making your information more memorable and persuasive
The Neuroscience Behind Data Storytelling (Ellen Lingwall, Medium, 2019)
Why storytelling is among the most sought skills--and provokes organizational change
Data Storytelling: The Essential Data Science Skill Everyone Needs (Brent Dykes, Forbes, 2016)
Why good storytelling moves people to act on your analytics
The next chapter in analytics: data storytelling (Beth Stackpole, MIT Sloan, 2020)
How people react to statistics with defensiveness--but stories with openness
Why Storytelling Beats Statistics, But Only 100% Of The Time (Chris Westfall, Forbes, 2020)
In politics, "deep canvassing" uses storytelling to prevent a defensive response to a conflicting position
How to talk someone out of bigotry with deep canvassing (Brian Resnick, Vox, 2020)
Deep canvassing (which involves storytelling) is 102 times more effective than traditional canvassing (which does not)
The Best Way to Beat Trumpism? Talk Less, Listen More (Andy Kroll, Rolling Stone, 2020)
Example of an actual canvasser using the deep canvassing method to change a voter's mind
Watch A Voter Change Their Mind About Transgender Discrimination [8-minute video] (Los Angeles LGBT Center, YouTube, 2016)
Strategies for crafting your story (finding a compelling message, considering audience, etc.)
How to Tell a Story with Data (Jim Stikeleather, Harvard Business Review, 2013)
Structuring your presentation like a story (note: Duarte uses the Aristotelian "beginning, middle, end." We discussed CAR (Context, Action, Result) as a more descriptive framework)
Structure Your Presentation Like a Story (Nancy Duarte, Harvard Business Review, 2012)
Plot Devices to Make Your Stories More Compelling
Four Storytelling Techniques to Bring Your Data to Life (Nancy Duarte, MIT Sloan Management Review, 2020)
Considering Your Audience:
Scientific presenters need to consider their audience when presenting
Prioritize the needs of the audience when giving a presentation (David Rubenstein, Nature, 2018)
Connecting your purpose with your audience
A Road Map for Preparing Your Next Tech Talk (Melissa Marshall, Society of Women Engineers, 2018)
Aligning your story with the priorities of a busy decision maker
Selling to the C-Suite: Why Executives Disengage (Lisa Earle McLeod, Forbes, 2019)
Simplifying Your Speech
Scientific papers with more jargon are less likely to be cited by other researchers
Are You Confused by Scientific Jargon? So Are Scientists (Katherine Kornei, New York Times, 2021)
How to ensure your core message isn't lost in the clutter of a complex speech
How To Simplify And Communicate Complicated Ideas (Ari Zoldan, Forbes, 2021)
Why speeches differ from documents--and how to engage your audience through simplicity
A Speech Is Not an Essay (John Coleman, Harvard Business Review, 2014)
Why your PowerPoint slides should be simple, too
Do Your Slides Pass the Glance Test? (Nancy Duarte, Harvard Business Review, 2012)
Google Research on High-Performing Teams/Psychological Safety (Note: we discussed these concept in the last 4 minutes of class, mostly to tee up next week's guest lecture--but in our conversation after class ended, a number of people were interested in learning more. Here are some resources if you're interested in exploring how your teams can be higher performing by facilitating increased psychological safety):
Google's five predictors of successful teams:
The five keys to a successful team at Google (Julia Rozovsky, Google re:work, 2015)
Why teams thrive and why teams falter
What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team (Charles Duhigg, New York Times, 2016)
Google's guide on team effectiveness
Guide: Understand team effectiveness (Google re:work, 2016)
Recommended Books:
Lead with a Story
Lead with a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives That Captivate, Convince, and Inspire (Paul Smith, AMACOM, 2012)
Putting data into story form
DataStory: Explain Data and Inspire Action Through Story (Nancy Duarte, Ideapress, 2019)
Building psychological safety
The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Amy Edmondson, Wiley, 2018)
Week 6: Listening, Giving/Receiving Feedback, and Vulnerability
Note: this week's class was led by guest lecturer Jamila Rufaro, a senior facilitator and trainer for the popular Stanford GSB course, OB 374: Interpersonal Dynamics ("Touchy Feely"). She opted not to share her slides. Below are my notes on her presentation.)
Concepts Covered:
Johari Window (Four Quadrants):
Known to self x Known to others: Open Area (common knowledge)
- Can make this area bigger by disclosing
Known to self x Unknown to others: Hidden Area (private)
Unknown to self x Known by others: Blind area (blind spot)
- Can make this area smaller by asking for feedback
Unknown to self x Unknown to others: Subconscious (iceberg)
"The net" = on my side of the net are my thoughts, feelings, motivations, triggers, intentions, motivates. But you don't know what's on the other side of the net: you don't know their intentions. "Crossing the net" is making assumptions about the other person's thoughts, feelings, intentions, etc.
Feedback Model: "When you... I feel... [pause]"
"When you..." - make it behavioral specific, i.e., as a video camera would record it -- do NOT speculate on motives, intent, feelings, etc.
"I feel..." Feeling based: emotion, bodily sensation, metaphor, turn toward / away, impact
Make it timely: So as not to be distracted by loss of memory
Responding to feedback: "What I hear you saying is..."
Step by step process to responding:
1. Notice your emotional reaction, but tend to other person's emotions first
2. Paraphase to check for understanding and completeness
3. Validate emotions: I understand why you felt that way...
4. Respond:
- Intention
- Apology
- Explanation
- Commitment
Feedback...
...is a disclosure about the emotional impact one person had on another
...is not a mandate for change
People change when it is in their best interest to do so
People act reasonably from their point of view
Listening skills:
(Hint: Listening is not passive)
Use: Speaker-Centered Responses
Silence (Giving space to the speaker)
Affirmations of contact (Mmm-hmm, nodding)
Paraphrase or restatement (I hear you saying...)
Clarification (Check for missed meaning)
Reflection of core feelings (I heard you say that you felt...)
Interpretation (It sounds like...)
Sharing the impact (When you say... I feel...)
Use with Caution: Listener-Centered Responses:
Sharing the impact
Encouragement, assurance (I want to make you feel better)
Question (Why did you?)
Confrontation (Why didn't you?)
AVOID - Direct Responses
Challenge
Advice (You should...)
Entreatment (The smart thing to do is... what I would do is...)
Commands or threat (You have to...)
Summary:
Use disclosure as a way of becoming better known: disclosure about your past and disclosure about what is going on for you currently
Feedback is a disclosure about your emotional reaction
Recognize that what you don't know about yourself is the impact you are having on others
Recall the 5 ways of expressing reactions
Stay on your side of the net
Notice defensiveness; respond with curiosity
Resources Recommended by Jamila:
For concepts related to Interpersonal Dynamics ("Touchy Feely"):
Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues (David Bradford and Carole Robin, Currency, 2021)
Making disclosures and being vulnerable
The Power of Vulnerability [20-minute video] (Brené Brown, TED, 2014)
Why empathy brings about connection
Brené Brown on Empathy [3-minute video] (RSA, YouTube, YouTube, 2013)
Resources Recommended by Matt:
Johari Window and feedback:
Johari Window overview
Try This Technique 11,000 Leaders Use to Understand Themselves Better (Peter Kodozy, Inc., 2017)
Using the Johari Window to increase self-awareness and become a better leader
Increasing Leadership Awareness (Douglas Bush, LinkedIn, 2015)
Building your self-awareness in the workforce
What Self-Awareness Really Is (and How to Cultivate It) (Tasha Eurich, Harvard Business Review, 2018)
Incorporating feedback to reduce your blind spots
Why You Need To Listen To Your 360 Feedback (World Economic Forum, Forbes, 2016)
Specific methods to take to reduce your blind spots
4 Ways To Decrease Your Blind Spots As A Leader (Karen Walker, Forbes, 2020)
Listening:
When you allow others to speak about themselves, they experience pleasure (dopamine)!
The Neuroscience of Everybody's Favorite Topic (Adrian F. Ward, Scientific American, 2013)
When being paid to talk, people are willing to accept less money if they get to talk about themselves!
How Talking About Yourself is Like a Drug (Celeste Headlee, Rewire, 2018)
How distractions, multitasking, and other pitfalls make us terrible listeners
Now Hear This! Most People Stink at Listening [Excerpt] (Bob Sullivan and Hugh Thompson, Scientific American, 2013)
Put away your cell phone--even just the presence of a cell phone on a table that nobody touches degrades conversation
Even just the presence of a smartphone lowers the quality of in-person conversations (Tom Jacobs, Pacific Standard, 2017)
Nonverbal strategies to be perceived as a good listener
What Does Compassion Look Like? (Kelly McGonigal, Psychology Today, 2011)
Vulnerability/Making Disclosures:
Brené Brown's finding that shame creates distance between people--and that empathy fuels connection
Brené Brown On Shame: ‘It Cannot Survive Empathy’ (Lynn Okura, HuffPost, 2013)
Brown's interview with Oprah on shame (cw: reference to sexual abuse)
Dr. Brené Brown: "Shame Is Lethal" [4-minute video] (Brené Brown, SuperSoul Sunday, Oprah Winfrey Network, 2013)
Brown's findings on how vulnerability and empathy drive human connection
The power of vulnerability [20-minute video] (Brené Brown, TED, 2015)
Recommended books:
Listening
The Lost Art of Listening: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships (Michael P. Nichols, Guildford Press, 2009)
Receiving Feedback
Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well (Douglas Stone & Sheila Heen, Penguin Books, 2015)
The role of vulnerability in the workplace
Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead (Brené Brown, Penguin Books, 2015)e
Week 7: Sparking Peak Performances
Note: because this week's topic involved introspection and personally-held values, I opted NOT to use PowerPoint to avoid distracting from student introspection of their core values.
Concepts Covered:
Values affirmation (Geoffrey Cohen & David Sherman):
- Identify your core value or values
- Spend 10 minutes writing on why your core value(s) are important to you
- There's 30 years of scholarly research on the values affirmation intervention and it has been linked with the following benefits (among many others):
Short-term:
- Feeling stronger, prouder, and more in control
- Feeling more empathetic, connected, and loving of others
- Increased pain tolerance, self-control, and decreased ruminations after stressful events
Long-term:
- Some of the following benefits continued even YEARS after a single 10-minute intervention:
- Reduced doctor visits
- Improved mental health
- Boosted GPAs among students
- Helped with weight loss, quitting smoking/drinking, and addiction
- Helped with people to remain perseverant in the face of discrimination
Why are people in touch with their values able to transform stress?
- Being able to connect a source of stress to something that brings you meaning instantly transforms the moment
- If my toddler is screaming (source of stress), but I view it as an opportunity for me to live into my personal value of kindness, then suddenly what started off as a stressor becomes a source of personal meaning
- Leaders who are in touch with their values and demonstrate that they will not compromise on them are rated as better leaders
- Employees who are able to connect their values to their work experience higher job satisfaction and lower burnout rates (e.g., the hospital custodian who saw his work as saving lives)
Resources:
Finding Meaning (Transforming Stress):
People who pursue happiness are less satisfied with life than people who pursue meaning
There's More to Life than Being Happy (Emily Esfahani Smith, The Atlantic, 2013)
Emily Esfahani Smith's four pillars to finding meaning
There's More to Life than Being Happy [12-minute video] (Emily Esfahani Smith, TED, 2017)
Finding meaning in your work is also more important than happiness (higher satisfaction, lower burnout)
Why Finding Meaning At Work Is More Important Than Feeling Happy (Jessica Amortegui, Fast Company, 2014)
Hospital custodians who find meaning in their work (e.g., saving patient lives) feel most satisfied
A hospital worker has the most satisfying job in the world — You'd be surprised which one (Becker's Hospital Review, 2015)
You can transform your work into pleasure by how you relate your work to other people and your values
'Job Crafting': The Great Opportunity In The Job You Already Have (David Sturt, Forbes, 2013)
How you can turn your work into something you love
Want To Be Happier At Work? Learn How From These "Job Crafters" (David Zax, Fast Company, 2013)
If you want to transform stress, embrace it! (Kelly McGonigal's research findings)
Embracing stress is more important than reducing stress, Stanford psychologist says (Clifton B. Parker, Stanford News, 2015)
Embracing stress
How to make stress your friend [14-minute video] (Kelly McGonigal, TED, 2013)
Identifying/Naming Your Values:
You cannot live into your values if you haven't yet named your values
Operationalizing your organization's values (Brené Brown, 2019)
List of values to help you find your 1-2 core values
List of Values (Brené Brown, 2019)
Operationalizing Values within a Team/Organization:
Being in touch with your values as a leader
Discovering Your Authentic Leadership (Bill George, et. al., Harvard Business Review, 2007)
Creating a culture of shared values within an organization
6 Rules for Building and Scaling Company Culture (Anthony Tjan, Harvard Business Review, 2015)
Focusing on the "why" of your (organization's) work inspires people to join
How Great Leaders Inspire Action [18-minute video] (Simon Sinek, TED, 2009)
Recommended Books
Finding meaning and thriving off of stress
The Upside of Stress (Kelly McGonigal, Avery, 2016)
Aligning your core values to achieve as a leader
Discover Your True North (Links to an external site.) (Bill George, Jossey-Bass, 2015)
Week 8: Bringing Your Best
The students killed it this week--and definitely brought their best. Apart from very short introductory and conclusionary remarks by me, the entirety of this class was filled with students' TED-style talks. Every single speech I sat in on stepped up to the plate and gave a performance worthy of the moniker. Many congratulations to all of you on your successful talks--and if ever you are delivering momentous public-facing talks in the future, I hope you'll share them with me.