Guest Post: Anup Shete

Anup is one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students. Here he blogs about virtual communication.

Virtual communication is the process of meeting in virtual reality. There are basically two types of virtual communication processes. One is synchronous communication which includes video conferencing, phone and chat. In this type, all parties involved interact and respond immediately (or at the same time). The other type of virtual communication is asynchronous communication. This includes email, forums, blogs, etc. Here the response can be delayed (or is not expected at all). Virtual communication is catching up very fast in today’s hectic world as people find less time to travel and prefer meeting or staying in touch online and getting things done faster. However, virtual communication does come with its set of pros and cons. We’ll concentrate on active communication viz. synchronous communication in the professional scenario.

One of the best things about synchronous communication is that it saves you the time of having to physically travel to the location to meet the person. You can interact with multiple people through video conferencing and phone while cutting down on traveling time and cost. Multi-country meetings are possible without even leaving the office. I have personally had most of my client meetings as teleconference or video-conference calls. This gives you the ability to interact with the client immediately every time you have a query or need to discuss something in general. For personal interactions, applications like Skype make it easy for one to see one's family and talk to them at the same time.

Although virtual communication has its benefits, there are some downsides to communicating without being physically present. The most important one is that there is no face-to-face interaction, which can be daunting for some people. We miss out on subtle non-verbal cues like facial expressions, body language, etc., when we meet in the virtual space. As part of a study done for the Cornell Daily Sun, Christine Duffy of the Maritz travel company and Mary Beth McEuen from the Maritz institute found that virtual communication is less effective than face to face meeting (http://cornellsun.co/node/44228). The study mentions facial expressions and body language as critical factors in the process of communication which are missing in virtual interactions.

I remember an instance from one of our client meetings. It was a teleconference call between two teams, one in India and the other in the United States. Since everyone was connecting virtually, they preferred joining in from their homes. Most of the people involved in the conference thought they could multi-task and manage something else while on the call. In the end, it was complete chaos. People were trying to interact with each other while the other person was doing something else. Although a virtual meeting was the best option in this case, the idea of the meeting became casual once everyone realized it was not face to face.

On a more personal note, I agree with the study mentioned above that face-to-face meetings are more personal as well as effective. Meeting someone in person automatically straightens you up and makes you pay attention. However, there are some instances when it is not possible to be present physically, and that’s when virtual meetings come in handy. Especially with globalization, the need to interact with people from all over the world has increased, and it is definitely cheaper and more convenient to interact virtually despite its drawbacks.

Guest Post: Syenny (Wen-Hsien) Lee

Syenny is one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students at Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Here she blogs about getting the job you want.

Have you found the company you want to work for? Congratulations if you have! If not, don’t be dismayed. Here are a few steps to find the kinds of companies you’d want to work for.

Step 1: Know who you are. Ask yourself these questions, “What are the things that I am passionate about?” “Do I like to work in an A/C office with a computer or do I like to be outdoors and meeting different people?” “Are there ways to turn those into business opportunities?” If you are not sure about what your passion is, start eliminating some jobs or industries by asking, “What are the things that I definitely won’t enjoy doing?” Make a list and see if there are any correlations to it.

Step 2: Make a list of companies. Once you have an idea of which industries you are interested in, you can research for the most well-known companies/organizations in those industries. Research thoroughly on the companies: Fact, culture, story. The goal is to find the best fit. According to the article “What Kind of Company Do You Want to Work For?” by Joyce Gioia, Herman Group, here is a list of questions to ask yourself to find out the makeup and styles of a specific company you want to work for:

• Do you want to work for a market leader or a start-up?
• Do you want to work for a company with solid name recognition?
• Do you want to work in a large organization or a small one?
• Do you want to know where the company has been, and where it is headed?
• Is the quality of a company’s goods and services a deciding factor?

Step 3: Find job openings through different media, channels and connections.
Here are some tools I use to obtain job opening information:

• Social media: LinkedIn. Join an alumni group of your school and you will receive job posting emails regularly.
• Personal relationships: Go to networking events; network through colleagues who know someone else who can connect you to a potential employer; talk to alumni who are working in your targeted industry; engage with guest speakers whom you identify with and are in your dream field.
• School resources: Career service provides counseling and email job openings updates very often; pay attention to those emails and follow with ones that interest you. Don’t delete the emails, keep an archive. You may find it useful one day.
• Conferences/Exhibitions: Attend big conferences in the industry you are interested in. Besides taking the lessons provided at the conference, also attend social events such as business luncheons and dinner events. You will meet people with similar backgrounds who are already in the industry. This is a chance to build a professional network. I have been to the American Association of Museums Annual Conference (AAM) and met so many museum professionals and exchanged thoughts and experiences with them. They are great resources for future references.

Step 4: A few reminders on interviewing

• Be early. I always arrive 30 minutes to 10 minutes early. Once I interviewed an applicant who was late, which immediately left me with a bad impression.
• Bring work samples and projects (or anything that can demonstrate your skills tangibly) to show and tell (especially if your job is related to marketing).
• Ask questions. I always ask questions, to gain information I don’t know and to show the interviewer that I am serious about this job.
• Smile, be confident. Have a positive attitude. People like to be with happy people.
  

Be honest to your heart. Be prepared, and relax!

Guest Post: Madhusudan Srinivasa Raghavan

Madhusudan is one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon. Here he writes about the power of virtual communication.

It was summer 2010 when our management team at my previous organization was conducting a post mortem on an executive review meeting that ended with the client walking out of the room. The meeting feedback portal had a lot of suggestions for improvement and a plethora of things to address. However, one item that stood out as an important area of concern was the fact that our presentation was poorly structured as it never conveyed what it had for the customer. It was a moment of reckoning for us as we realized the power of virtual communication.

More often than not, most presenters fail to impress the audience primarily because of the fact that the audience never understands what is in it for them until the end of the presentation. While it is important that the presenter conveys his point of view, it is also vital that the presentation must be oriented towards the audience and must have some take-away for the listeners.

A sound structure is pretty important as the flow of the speaker would keep the audience engaged through the course of the presentation. The presentation must have an interesting introduction, good details backed with facts and a powerful conclusion. The attention span of the listeners does not remain constant throughout the lecture and hence adding stories will always help the cause as it is bound to capture the audience’s imagination.

The logistics available must be fully utilized based on need. While details are an integral part of the presentation, it is a given that the presenter is at the focal point and not the slide deck. Hence, having content that are visual and creative will help the audience relate to things better than when conveyed through slides that are too verbose or complicated. Also, too much focus on the slide deck would mean that the presenter loses out on eye contact with the audience during the process of reading through the slides. The presentation must focus on conveying the message and slide decks would just aid the speaker in the process, while the limelight is on the presenter.

It is inevitable that there will be logistical glitches that might disrupt the flow of the presentation. The wit and the presence of mind of the presenter must come into play to engage the audience with humor. The presenters could avoid such logistical interruptions by reaching the venue ahead of time and conducting a dry run with the equipment that would be used for the final presentation. This implicitly means that the presenter needs be there ahead of time to the presentation. Reaching the venue late would not only mean gaining a bad first impression, but also would create a sense of panic which might upset the morale of the presenter.

Last but not the least, any form of communication in an organizational context must result in action. Most presentations fail miserably as the audience go out of the room with the “SO-WHAT” question. As a presenter, it is very important that enough time is spent on preparation to address the need of the presentation. The success of any presentation can be attributed to the fact that audience had a clear message in it, in terms of what was the situation or detail and what is the take away and, most importantly, what would be the next steps. This, according to me, would be the most challenging part to the presenter as he/she needs to keep in mind that the presentation leads to action.

Guest Post: Hemant Mohan

Hemant is one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz College. Here he writes about getting the job you want.

The job market is like a box full of chocolates. Jobs are available in all sorts of flavors and sizes. The trick is to pick the one job that best suits your palate. Finding the right company that fits your bill requires introspection. Know what it is you want to do. Recognizing your talents and skills is important, so that you can understand the way you can make a career out of them. Once you clear this stage, you start researching companies that do business, which require a workforce with your skills and talents. More often than not, your skills and talents are the areas of work that would interest you the most.

To find the kinds of companies you’d want to work for, it is important that you connect with present and ex-employees of such prospective companies. They are the best resources to give you an idea of the working environment of a company. Understand if the company’s culture fits your own personality. Ask such questions as, do I enjoy dressing up in formal business attire everyday or am I comfortable in going to work in casuals? Do I like to be bossed around or am I more of an independent worker? What are the employee benefits? What is the company’s vision and mission statement? It is very important that you fit with the prospective company’s culture else down the line you might be reading this article again!

Making the right connections with present or ex-employees within a company of your choice might land you a job interview through employee referrals. Posting your resume on the career services websites or on the prospective company’s website is also recommended. Make sure that your resume clearly draws a connection between your previous work experience or education and the job requirement that you want to interview for. The more focused you are in your job search, the more likely you are to find a job that matches your career and life goals.

Guest Post: Jayesh Nachnani

Jayesh is one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon University. In this post, he writes about getting the job you want.

There are two fundamental questions one needs to ask oneself before looking for a job. These are:

What kind of role is he/she looking for? and

Which companies best suit his/her requirements?

Finding companies and roles first requires that we find out more about ourselves. Knowing what we are looking for is often not a straight forward question and requires some amount of soul searching on our part. For example, working for a small start-up in California is very different from working for a huge bank in New York. People also prefer different types of roles and companies at different times in their career. Once we have analyzed our preferences (along with our strengths and weaknesses) it is time to look for companies and roles that match these.

An excellent way to research what qualifications and responsibilities each role requires is to go through the Occupational Outlook handbook (http://bls.gov/oco/).The handbook contains up to date and comprehensive information regarding the nature of work, job outlook, projections and earnings of various roles in diverse industries. Matching these with our own preferences is a good way to shortlist the roles.

Researching the kinds of companies we want to work for is extremely important. This can be done in various ways. Websites like vault.com and glassdoor.com provide valuable information. Other ways to find about companies is through alumni or personal networks. Information sessions by companies and networking events can be great ways to find out more about our dream companies. Once a few potential companies are identified, going through the company websites provides valuable insight into the inner workings of the organizations.

One of the most important things to do in order to get a job interview is to be proactive. We should always have a few copies of our current resume and business cards handy. The function of the resume is to get us the job interview. The resume should always be up to date. It should highlight our strengths, past work experience and achievements that ‘fit’ with the job we are looking for. In this day and age of social and professional networks, having an updated and presentable public profile is also extremely important. Employers tend to look up people on social and professional networks.

One of the best ways to get an interview is to get referred. Often, we don’t realize that we could get ourselves referred through various people. Attending conferences and networking events and handing out our business cards and resume are also brute force ways of getting the job interviews. For those of us in college, career services are one of the most important ways to land interviews. If the above stated methods cannot be used for certain companies, posting our resume in response to requirements listed on company websites can be a useful way to get a few calls.

Guest Post: Akshat Sinha

Akshat is one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students. Here he writes about real-world meetings.

Executives of company A, along with supervisors from the development and testing teams from both companies met at company B’s premises to discuss about a product they had been developing together. A room with twelve people chaired by Mr. Doe from company B ‘kicked-off’ with the top item on the agenda - status updates from each team. At that time, there were two unoccupied seats in the room, but the time was five minutes past ten already. A’s developing supervisor started with his updates and touched bases with the members of the other team. At twenty minutes into the meeting , a serious discussion about a critical procedure with potential legal implications was on the third PowerPoint slide and the door opened. The two people missing from the meeting, entered the room with an apology.

After the meeting was over, there was some confusion around the critical procedure that was being discussed at twenty minutes past when the meeting had begun. Participants who were in doubt over the relevance of the procedure did not question-and-clarify in the room for having been thought of as the dumb fellows. They pretended to understand everything. Eventually, there was another meeting held for the same topic two days later. What I described above was an experience that I had a few years ago. Was the first meeting successful? Were the chances for the second one to be successful, grim?

Meeting – the dictionary definition is “an assembly or conference of persons for a specific purpose.” We are a social species. Even with the rise in technology and the presence of voice and video gadgets everywhere, traditional style face-to-face meetings are still the choice of people where ever possible. Why? Because a person’s truth value, confidence and self-presentation give the on-looker an impression with which the meeting is likely to be driven and result in an outcome. Being a ‘servant’ [HBS April, 1977] of a meeting is what determines the success of that multi-person rendezvous. By success, I simply mean – there is no meeting after the meeting to discuss the same subject again, neither officially nor a small talk between the participants. The whole point of the meeting is to get everybody in the room to present their ideas, thoughts, expertise, experience, criticisms, observations, etc., and get them reviewed by others.

I have a strong belief that one must do everything in his/her power before, during and after the meeting to ensure the meeting’s success. Each individual in the room is present to learn something and share his knowledge with others, in effect modifying the cognizance in the room, so that a collective decision is made. Research shows that to get commitment from people, one must get them to say ‘I will do it’ by the end of the meeting. The keyword for the duration of the meeting is “Action.” Chris Labash’s 5Ps, as he thoughtfully quotes, “are very important to get the most out of a conference.” These include ‘Purpose,’ ‘People,’ ‘Preparation,’ ‘Participation’ and ‘Point.’ The very basic question, ‘Do we need a meeting in the first place?’ is the one most important element that determines if the meeting will be driven to an outcome. The key elements of a great meeting, if put in hierarchy, would follow a common path. Each element is important to ensure a result-oriented delivery.

After the purpose is determined, chalking out an ‘agenda’ enables a smooth topic-by-topic discussion without digression, again an important factor! “Stick to what we want to discuss today” should speak for this point. Next, the number of participants would make the list at number three. Research shows that in meetings with more than ten participants, a challenge bigger than driving the meeting is to handle the people first. Associated with the participants is the ‘time of day’ factor, which also has a big hand in determining the likelihood of how good or bad the meeting would be. It is Tuesday and you’ve made plans with family over the weekend. Tickets are booked. Reservations are made. Boss sends a meeting invite for Friday 4PM. Uncomfortable and uneasy feelings usually engulf the room. Was that meeting perfect? May be, or may be far from it! Latter is most likely.

Next question, “is the ‘location’ well equipped with the tools/electronic items such as projectors, A/V products etc. which are necessary for this meeting?” Absence of a projector, for example, in a business proposal meeting could show how a company is organized and decisions would be made rather quickly. The next item in the hierarchy is the meeting ‘invitation’. Depending on the kind of workplace, culture, topics, agenda etc. the aesthetics and content of the invitation play an important role. Attaching a draft agenda is always the best idea for people to be prepared. The contents of the invitation also drive our next important handler – “What should I bring to the meeting? Paper to take notes, perhaps!” The above are the so called ‘before(s)’ of a meeting. What follows next is the actual meeting.

Being late for a meeting should always be a capital ‘NO.’ Arrive early, distribute the final agenda, start the meeting with introductions and the purpose of the get-together and run the meeting! Behavioral ground rules for the meeting become apparent from the person who drives the meeting. Bluntly put, “If a person speaks, others should listen!” is how the meeting should run. The confidence and attitude of the chair should send a message across participants of what they are there for and what is expected.

After all, a meeting without action is nothing but conversation, which is not effective. The metric of the meeting is its outcome, the solution to a problem – in any form, document, individual assignments, pictures, videos, etc.. The elements described above are a tool which, when used religiously, would simply inculcate the necessary steps in a person over-time. These could be highly effective for the person in the long run with no extra effort pulled from within. The essentials of how to lead and run meetings would simply come by habit.

Guest Post: Jagadish Harihara Subramanian

Jagadish is a Master's student at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College and one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students. Here he writes about real-world oral communication.

Being “social” beings, we all want to interact with other beings and the best way to do this is through oral communication. Communication is identified in many forms of human activities, like asking for food when hungry, asking for help when in trouble, warning others in danger, asking questions, answering queries, sharing ideas, cracking jokes, singing songs, etc. All these types of communication are best done with a mix of voices and gestures -we call it “Real-world Oral Communication.”

Technology and globalization have made the modern world a smaller place. The challenge naturally arising from it is the need for effective communication to reach a wider audience. The message to be delivered can be critical news, an important warning or an innovative idea that has to spread to - may be - the whole world! Such type of communication is called “Information Dissemination.” Whatever the message is and how much ever big the audience is, the best way of spreading information is through oral communication. Human brains can easily capture voice and gestures because it is the most primitive and natural form of communication.

One of the advantages of oral communication is the ability it provides the speaker to persuade. In this competitive world, our victory depends upon how effectively we can persuade others to do things our way. A clear, purposeful, targeted and well-articulated speech will attract attention; but not necessarily persuasion. For persuasion, the speech has to be precise, coherent and logical. We can achieve this only by understanding the passions and predispositions of the audience, and by tactfully organizing various phases of our speech. We must start with an idea or a statement acceptable to the prejudiced mind of the listeners. Otherwise, they might quit listening in the beginning itself. Once they get along with us, present the idea we wish to persuade in a way that will agree with the passions of the listeners. They will then pursue this idea as one of their own goals. Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech is a good example of persuasive speaking. Instead of simply calling for ‘racial equality,’ King articulated how promoting racial equality would make each one of them uphold the U.S Constitution and its ideals better. This touched the patriotic minds of listeners and resulted in the intended action.

Along with the advantages, oral communication brings about certain disadvantages, too. The fact that it is very hard to hide our emotions when talking can result in bad conversations. Sometimes, we may want to slyly move away from expressing our inner feelings directly to a person. But if confronted in a conversation, it may get spilled. At some point in our lives, we may be forced to participate in “difficult conversations.” A discussion with a subordinate regarding a complaint against him, an unavoidable conversation that may embarrass the other person, a heated argument, etc., are examples. Failure to handle such difficult conversations can result in fights, losing trust, ego-clashes or hurting others’ feelings. We may either become too passive and lose the argument/conversation or become too aggressive and think we have won. However, in either case we lose. To reduce the difficulty, converse politely and don’t be too aggressive or passive. Also get to the point soon!

Oral communication is like a deadly weapon that you can use to persuade others do what you want. But beware! If you don’t use it carefully, it may recoil!