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listener.” Or,“I would like to speak up more at meetings when I really have something to contribute.” • Time for action. Identify one specific situation where you can and, more importantly, you will, practice getting better. What specific action are you going to take that will produce this improvement ? For example, say you want to work on your listening skills: “In this week’s staff meeting, I am going to work harder to concentrate on what others say and follow up with specific questions. I’m also going to fight the urge to interrupt just because a thought comes into my mind.” • Finally, how specifically are you going to monitor or evaluate your communication progress in this area? Consider this suggestion . Three months from now, go back and ask those same people how they think you are doing. Ask, “On a scale from one to five, to what degree to you believe my communication skills regarding XYZ have improved in the last three months?” One is virtually no progress, and five means you are hitting a home run. Also ask respondents to provide at least one concrete example to support their answer regardless of whether they give you a one or a five. Sounds like a lot of work, right? Well, becoming a great communicator doesn’t happen overnight and it’s not easy. But the payoff is huge. Go ahead, take the test. What do you have to lose? Chapter 17 “BUT I HA VE MORE SLIDES . . .” Timing is everything—as recently demonstrated at a national drug awareness and prevention conference. A large crowd of nearly 200 gathered to find out more about how they could protect their children and others from the scourge of drugs. This was a highly motivated audience. A panel of three teenagers, ages fifteen, sixteen, and eighteen, had 38 MAKE THE CONNECTION the audience enthralled as they told their individual stories of drug use beginning as early as age nine and moving quickly from marijuana to heroine. Their stories were personal and painful. Their struggle to stay clean and sober resonated in a deep and emotional way. Later, a member of Congress gave a brief five-minute speech about what he and his colleagues were doing to respond to the drug problem. He was concise, to the point, and was well received by the audience. Because the conference had a very busy agenda, each speaker was given a certain amount of time. One of those speakers, a much-acclaimed researcher who had spent years analyzing drug use among teens, was asked to give a ten-minute PowerPoint presentation. The researcher’s first few slides were interesting even though she spoke in a monotone voice with little passion. However, within minutes it was painfully clear that she was losing the audience. Her numbers, displayed in a myriad of graphs and charts, were beginning to blur and confuse. The energized audience was being brought down by the dreaded data dump. Ironically, the researcher was specifically asked by conference organizers not to use “too many numbers or slides.” After about ten minutes she announced she had only a few more slides. About twenty slides into the presentation, something had to be done. Conference organizers asked the moderator to get a message to the speaker. By now, many in the audience were shuffling in their seats, checking their Blackberries, talking on cell phones, and looking at their watches. I could have sworn a few of them were actually sleeping. Finally the moderator walked up to the speaker and quietly whispered ,“Doctor, you are going to have to wrap it up.” The speaker looked stunned and responded,“But I have more slides.”Then she said to the audience , “I’m being told I have to wrap it up, but I’m just getting to what I really wanted to say.” What? How could she just be getting to what she wanted to say twenty minutes into the presentation? A good communicator leads with the main message.You don’t wait until you’ve lost your audience and any semblance of momentum before you say “what you really want to say.” The speaker fast-forwarded through her PowerPoint slides until she got to her last one. She hurried her final comments, unable to conclude with a powerful take-away or “call to action.” She simply ended because she was being forced to get off the stage. The Power of Passion and Connecting with Others 39 [3.141.41.187] Project...

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