If you’re a manager, consider having a ‘Listening station’ near your desk as your designated place to listen to your direct reports and other people who want to talk with you.
Let me explain. When people come up to your desk to talk with you for ‘just a minute’ it can be tempting to continue to work on the matter in front of you while you partially listen to the person (please see last week’s post, ‘Continuous partial attention versus DBAE’).Continue reading
In 1998 Linda Stone, former Vice President of Microsoft, coined the term continuous partial attention. Stone is quoted in David Rock’s book, Your Brain at Work*, as saying that, “To pay continuous partial attention is to keep a top-level item in focus, and constantly scan the periphery in case something more important emerges”.
I acknowledge that in some situations it is important to have CPA (continuous partial attention). However, CPA can have damaging consequences.Continue reading
To make a strong physical connection when you’re speaking to a group of people, cycle through the following technique: ‘Pause, lock & speak’. Here’s an explanation of the technique. 1. Pause: This means that when speaking, always inject pauses or pause gaps between your thought groups (English speakers talk in thought groups). Continue reading
When you begin to speak, at a stand-up sales presentation for a large audience, ‘plant’ your feet while you deliver your opening words. After standing in that spot for a time, for your body movement for the rest of your spoken message delivery, think: ‘Move, Stop, Talk’.Continue reading
Comedians say that ‘Distance is death’. What this means is that if a comedian is physically, too far away from the audience he/she will ‘die’ (ie. Not get any laughs). What does this have to do with delivering your sales presentations and spoken messages? Simply this. In any interaction be aware of the physical distance between yourself and the audience, even if you’re only interacting with one person.Continue reading