Communicating the Message - 1 of 5

"Where is the feection?" my professor belted again and again in his strong Spanish accent, "Sell me the teecket!"

As a part of a dance program one summer, I took an elective class on voice and gesture. The premise of the course was to stretch dancers to learn how to use the added medium of their voices in their art. (If you're a dancer, you understand this challenge!)

My professor was looking for the story in our art, what he called "the fiction," and he knew he needed us to give him everything we had to get the story to him, to our audience.

What I most appreciated about the class was that it was never enough only to have words. We would take a sheet of words and chop it up to work on inflection, gesturing, song, pace, tone.

And then we would perform the words. And his point was always clear: you are telling a story, engage me.

It's the same in any communication, traditional and non-traditional. Your ideas are important. Tell the story. Engage me.

In the next few blogs, I will uncover some basics of great communication: idea, context, action, and repetition.

The Perfect (and Brief) Response

This year, I don't have much in the way of new year's resolutions.

I started exercising (again) last November. Not a resolution.

I've just ended a nine-year career in missions, ministry and church communications and am looking for a job. But I don't desire to spend my entire year looking for a job. Not a resolution.

But there are a few larger things that keep coming back to me. One of them is my responsiveness in my digital communications.

Here's the issue: Many times when I'm responding on a personal level, it's not that I don't respond or that I don't want to respond. Usually the issue in my delayed response is that I don't know how to respond.

I have friends who do this beautifully without a hitch, and I think, now that was not hard at all.

Or was it?

Communication in a digital world is mostly just words. No hugs or handshakes, no nodding head that says you're listening. For a person who loves to see people when they speak, it's a painful reality!

I ask myself, am I kind, gracious, forgiving, helpful, friendly, concise, loving? Am I what I need to be in my response?

...And am I brief?

I would love to hear how you decide what goes into a responsive email, a tweet, a Facebook post. And when your response requires something more than the regular one- or two-liner. Please leave your comments below!

Open the conversation, Open new doors

I called a local kid entertainment company today in hopes that their bad reviews online were untrue.

I talked with the manager. She was very kind and took initiative to address my concerns.

As we talked, I heard two common problems arise, that I have heard in my own efforts to solve tough problems: some defensiveness and some tied hands due to company culture.

It sounded like she may have heard similar complaints and wanted to defend herself, her work, her employees and her business. And it sounded like she really didn't have the authority to make the necessary changes in company policy she would need to in order to respond fully to the bad reviews.

Two lessons come to mind:

1. On a personal level, defensiveness can always close the conversation. It's so important to listen. Be sure you understand the questions or the attack and then attempt to begin the conversation - with the customer, your employees, and yourself.

2. On a larger level, bad company culture (and/or our own bad management) can close the doors to new growth. Don't forget to listen. Be sure you give the people you lead the room to think critically and make the changes they need to in order for your organization to grow.

Listening from your core can open the conversation and open new doors.

Comm 101

It's the first day of summer classes. I walk into what will be "Intro to Communications" for the next six weeks, grab a syllabus from the teaching assistant (TA), and find a seat. I take a look at the syllabus. I see some writing, an image of two phones with lines back and forth between them, and more writing. And then I wait for the class to commence.

The TA begins to talk about communications theory. That many people think it happens in a single direction: someone says something, they've communicated. Turns out that's a pretty ancient way of thinking.

And I had no idea that those two phones on the syllabus would haunt me for life.

"Two-way communication theory," he/she says. (Sadly, I don't remember the teacher. All I remember are the phones.)

Two-way communication was the phrase we were going to get sick of hearing for the remaining six weeks. Thinking of communications as "two-way" says that after all the hustle and bustle - the emails, the tweets, the hoot and hollerin' of the message - there is something that remains to be done.

There must be feedback.

Just as there is no successful telephone call without an acknowledgement, a response or an effect from the one being called, there is no real communication without a full-circle process from sending the message to getting the cue the message has been received.

I'm sure this is oversimplified and most communication theorists would slay me, but this is what's haunted me in my years of traditional and non-traditional communications experience. It is not enough to create the message. There is no communication without response.

It's important to think of communication in any form - mass, traditional, interpersonal, electronic - as a conversation, a dialogue, a relationship.

Allow that thought to be your guide as you communicate.

And I hope to hear from you.