In this issue we look at:
	Glue guns, glitter and emotional intelligence Yes, You Can Say "No!" Are you Caught in the PowerPoint Trap What's your point of view? Illumination - New Ideas

Yes, You Can Say "No!"

I wish to publicly disagree with the old saying, "If you want something done, give it to a busy person." It may be efficient, but it's not fair. Busy people have enough to do. They're overwhelmed. They're exhausted. They're getting cranky. It's time to start saying, "No." A couple of months ago, I realized that I had become Psycho Volly. I had so many volunteer gigs that I was not only losing track of what worthy cause I was supposed to be helping at any given moment, I was starting to feel resentful. My time wasn't my own. It seemed as if other people were running my life. They weren't - I was running it - and I seemed to be running it into the ground. I was overcommitted and over-committeed. Fortunately the "Self-Awareness" area of my Emotional Intelligence kicked in. I declared a personal disaster and became my own favourite charity. I learned to say, "No." You can too. For tips, follow the link to my article, "Yes, You Can Say No." Then listen to your intuition. Self-Awareness Capabilities Emotional Self-Awareness: Reading one's own emotions and recognizing their impact; using 'gut sense' (intuition) to guide decisions. Accurate Self- Assessment: Knowing one's strengths and limits. Self-confidence: A sound sense of one's worth and capabilities. - From Primal Leadership by Goleman, Boyatzis & McKie (Harvard Business School Press) Are you overcommitted and overwhelmed? Read "Yes, You Can Say No" here. »

Are you Caught in the PowerPoint Trap

A new member of our Toastmasters group was getting ready to make his first speech last week. "I don't feel as "ready" as I'd like," he confessed. "I'm pretty nervous: I'm going against my usual practice of relying on PowerPoint." Oh, no! Another victim of the disease known as Slide Syndrome. Done well, PowerPoint (PP) is a way to enhance your message with memorable images that clarify meaning. Done poorly, it's a way to confuse your audience, strain their eyes, and cause them to tune out. Alas, most PP presentations are done poorly. They put the "mess" back in "message" with corny clip art, meaningless movement, confusing charts, too much type in unreadable sizes and colours set against a frightening background. "Friends don't let friends use PowerPoint!" is the cry of some of today's most thoughtful communicators. One of the loudest is Edward Tufte, who wrote the book (three actually) on displaying information visually. "As consumers of presentations," he writes, "you should not trust speakers who rely on the PP cognitive style. It is likely that these speakers are simply serving up PowerPointPhluff to mask their lousy content." In his pamphlet, The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, he tells the story of Lou Gerstner, on his first day as president of IBM, switching off the projector at a meeting and saying to the presenter, "Let's just talk about your business." Have we lost the art of talking about business? Tufte argues that there are better ways to do serious analysis than reading aloud from projected lists - such as "an exchange of information, an interplay between speaker and audience." The next issue of Be Understood will include Does PowerPoint Make Us Stupid?, a look at how we communicate, as humans, when making a presentation. Please participate in the It's Understood PowerPoint Poll. (The link to the 10-question survey is in the [Quick Links] section to the right.) The results will be included in the article. In the mean time, see Lincoln's Gettysburg Address as a PP presentation. »

What's your point of view?

A former boss liked to tell the story of six blind men and an elephant. Each man touches the part of the animal nearest to him. To the one who touches the side, the elephant is like a wall. To the one who touches its tusk, the elephant is like a spear; the trunk, a snake; the knee, a tree; the ear, a fan; and the tail, a rope. Each man was right and each was wrong. I was reminded of that story in discussing team challenges on a technology project. The team members aren't blind; however, they come from different divisions and relate differently to the product this new technology will support. Each sees the elephant - the project - from a different perspective. They use different language to describe the same operations, bringing the jargon and functional perspective of different departments. How can we help them all see the same elephant? Send your ideas here! We'll include our favourites in a future article. »

Illumination - New Ideas

Communicating well with employees can improve the bottom line A recent study by consultants Watson Wyatt shows that companies with the most effective employee communication programs provided a 26 per cent total return to shareholders (TRS) between 1998 and 2001. Of the 267 US firms studied, those who communicated the least effectively earned a -15 percent (yes minus) TRS. The study identified communication practices that are directly linked to increases in shareholder value. According to WatsonWyatt, the top three are: - driving managers' committment to effective communication, - having a formal communication process in place, and - making a clear connection between employees' jobs and business objectives. Kathryn Yates, one of the study's co-authors, says "The right kind of communication at the right time not only drives behaviour change, but also offers tremendous potential for creating shareholder value and generating significant ROI." Speaking of return on investment, the study also found that there is greater improvement when hard measures, such as productivity, behaviour change and meeting business objectives are used to measure the success of communications, rather than "feel good" surveys. Can a team have emotional intelligence? The emotional intelligence (EI) of a team is dependent on the skills of each member and the standards for behaviour the group adopts. The very act of exploring the topic of emotions as a group can contribute greatly to developing teamwork. On a high EI team, people can identify the emotions that arise and understand how everyone tends to respond to those emotions. They constructively manage the emotions and the moods of the group so they can work toward objectives. Team members interact effectively with each other and with other groups inside and outside the organization. A good place to start is with individual assessments, as these immediately raise people's awareness of the EI concepts and their own patterns and strengths as well as those of their team-mates. I saw this work brilliantly as a member of a large cross- functional (and dysfunctional) project team in a big Canadian bank. Individuals became aware - and more respectful - of other people's operating styles once these had been identified. We began to see ourselves as a cluster of complementary strengths, rather than a mob of competing problems. Simply being together focussing on something other than the project enabled us to get to know each other as humans. Our productivity as a team improved overnight. Want to use articles from Be Understood? The contents of this E-zine may be copied, reproduced, or freely distributed for all nonprofit purposes without the consent of the author as long as the following information is attached: [Reproduced with permission from Be Understood, the newsletter of It's Understood Communication. http://www.itsunderstood.com] See other articles at our web site . . . »