Orphaned adverts and disconnects

The No 57 tram stopped here in Frederick Street, Edinburgh.

A friend once told me that one of my biggest strengths as a facilitator is my ability to make connections. I also have a tendency to notice disconnects.

Orphaned Adverts

I can’t help noticing out-of-date adverts on the underground. There are places on the London network where posters for shows that have closed linger on. At the foot of an escalator at Oxford Circus, a touring version of the “The Nutcracker” from a former republic of the Soviet Union, plays on. Did anyone go? Are some adverts doomed never to find an audience?

The British Linen Bank, 141 Princes Street, Edinburgh, 1920s

Banks that were cashed in

Also the crests and names above the doors of former banks, now amalgamated, and - final insult - turned into a Wetherspoons pub, or worse. The National Provincial Bank carved in stone in Piccadilly, London. The British Linen Bank in George Street, Edinburgh. Cheques are no longer accepted here.

Severed from the network

And railway stations severed from the network. The Caledonian Railway terminus on Princes Street Edinburgh, where Queen Elizabeth II and the King of Norway arrived in a train from Leith Central Station in 1962. Aged 9, I watched the royals go by from a window at the West End Branch of the British Linen Bank, now – wait for this – selling tartan souvenirs.

Leith Central Station in 1962

Left by the roadside

And tram stops. In Frederick Street, Edinburgh, a damaged but decorative tram stop from the original network survives at the edge of the kerb. People park their cars beside it. The No 57 tram stopped here. And, by the way, trams are back on Princes Street after 57 years. Why did I notice the tiles, and why does this one stop survive? It’s like the adverts in the underground. The meaning has gone out of its message.

Loss Aversion

Behavioural theorists say that we have a tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains. I get a lot of messages from the past. 'See this show!' 'Bank with us!' 'Catch a train!' 'Get on a tram!' It’s not exactly nostalgia. It’s more about noticing connections, and making meaning. My mum always said I was good at noticing things.


Thanks for reading my blog. If you liked this page, you might like to check out my business website which has more content on leadership and learning.

www.kellowlearning.com

How to Survive Twelve Days of Networking: Tips for Reluctant Networkers

Now is the season of goodwill and networking opportunities

If your December diary is stuffed like a Christmas turkey, you have a choice to make. Either you can wrap tinsel round your ear, and get drunk with the crowd, or you can choose to network with purpose. I believe in the value of building, and looking after a strong professional network. Good networks are the gateway to opportunities to learn, grow and be happy. Need advice? Need a facilitator? Need a venue? You need a network.

When I talk about the importance of networking I hear the same objections.

I’m not good at networking

That is a cop-out. Everyone has charm, and everyone can network. To be honest, I am not always in the mood for networking, myself. Like the other night when a lady sat next to me at the theatre, and told me all about her interview with some magazine. “They loved me!” she said. Well, obviously, I was very happy for her, but that’s not networking. That’s broadcasting.

I don’t know what to say

You need to have an opening line. One of my friends swears by ‘I like your shoes’. I just say, ‘Where are you from?’ Then I relax, and listen. Don’t expect to make a good connection at every event. But when you do, make sure you drop them an email the next day. A follow-up email is the equivalent of a friendly wave and it means nothing. Don’t be pushy. At the same time, once you have their email, you can contact them again.

I don’t need to network

Yes, you do. In this hyper connected world everyone needs to be seen to network. For this reason you need an online presence, whether it is a LinkedIn profile, or some other site, so that people can check you exist. No-one exists today without an online profile.

What skills and knowledge are needed to be a good networker?

Good networkers have a genuine interest in other people, and are good listeners. Nelson Mandela knew how to make friends and influence people. One of the stories I read about him recently was how he won over some retired generals who were plotting a guerrilla war by making them all a nice cup of tea. Mandela won respect by giving it to others. Between now and Christmas, you can win over people by making sure they feel heard, and, possibly, making sure their glass is full of mulled wine.

Grey hair is no excuse for wearing a grey suit

Walking into a room full of men in grey suits still makes me uncomfortable, even though I am a grey haired man who sometimes wears a suit. Wear something that makes you stand out from the crowd, and look like you want to be in the room. Be decisive, go up to someone, and introduce yourself.

You have to work to make your network work for you

Here are some tips for how to engage and win people over:

1. Step out of your comfort zone. Talk to strangers, and resist the temptation to talk to the people you know.
2. Notice who is in the room and go and choose someone to interact with. People will not come and speak to you if you are standing hesitantly at the edge of the room.
3. Turn off your phone and put it away. If you need to hold something, get a drink. Even better, grab a bottle of wine and start to circulate.
4. Never make assumptions about the person standing next to you. You don’t know who they are, and you don’t know whom they know.
5. Take a lesson from Stephen Covey and listen empathetically. Give the people you meet a large dose of unconditional positive regard. Encourage them to tell you about themselves.
6. Then, and only then, you can reciprocate with a brief account of who you are, and what you do. Reciprocation, as Robert B Cialdini has taught us, is a weapon of influence.
7. Remember to smile. Flirting is good provided the person to whom you are speaking is not wearing a wedding ring.
8. Talk about what motivates or excites you. Passion and enthusiasm are infectious and engaging.
9. Follow through. 48 hours is the maximum time you can wait to send an email saying how much you enjoyed meeting someone. Even if you didn’t.
10. Keep your connections warm, if necessary using social networks like LinkedIn and Facebook. Tell people what you are doing, share relevant reports, and invite people to events.
11. People who are good at networking are successful because they are curious, and curiosity is the driver of innovation and creativity. The better your network, the easier it becomes to get things done.
12. Now is the season of office parties, talks and events. Put yourself about, go on the razzle. But network with purpose…

For more information about leadership and learning, please check out my new website www.kellowlearning.com

How to give a good graduation speech: a tale of three speakers

Photo Claudia Leisinger

In my time, I’ve taken part in quite a few graduation ceremonies, including the one where the guest of honour told the graduates to stop singing, and listen to what she had to say. I’ve made speeches, handed out certificates, smiled, shaken hands, and mispronounced names. Fortunately, graduations being a time to celebrate achievements with friends and family, audiences are usually very forgiving.

It’s a long time, however, since I graduated myself. Recently I was reunited with my classmates at a graduation ceremony in London. Given my previous experience of graduation ceremonies, I listened to the speeches and observed the ceremonies with a professional pair of ears and eyes. I was looking forward to sharing the stage with my beloved tutors and peers, all of whom had supported and challenged me in different ways. And I was also up for some gentle joshing over champagne and canapes. It was a wet and windy Friday evening, and because of this, perhaps, the promise of a glass of wine was more than usually pleasing.

A tale of three speakers

The first speaker talked about himself. The second speaker talked about somebody else. And the third speaker gave a pitch perfect talk about what she had learned about teamwork and conflict resolution, ending with three powerful messages for us to take away.

Talking about yourself and other people

When giving a speech, it’s OK, and even a good thing, to talk about yourself. I sometimes tell a joke against myself in order to connect with my audience. It’s a well-known technique for putting yourself on the same level as your audience. It’s also good to talk about other people. When I talk about leadership I always speak about leaders I know, and the skills and qualities that make them a leader for me.

Start with your audience

What I really liked about the third speaker was that she kept her talk firmly on intersection of leadership and learning, which was the place where we had all met more than a year ago. The third speaker started with her audience. A transatlantic rower, she talked about what she did, and what she had learned.

Be clear about your messages

Then she shared three simple and elegant messages about to lead a team when the going gets tough:

Have a conflict resolution plan before you start a project
Spend time with different people to avoid factions or cliques, and
Share your vulnerability with your team when you don’t know what to do.

Be modest about your achievements

The other thing the third speaker did was to keep a balanced perspective on what she had done. She didn’t pretend to be a superhero. Yes, she had had to face waves the size of a double-decker bus. And also, she remembered the beauty of seas, gleaming with phosphorescence, and stars so bright she felt she could reach out and touch them.

So what are the lessons for graduation speakers?

Start and finish with your audience

Be modest about your achievements

Whatever you say, have a reason for saying it to your audience

Give your audience something to take away and use

Be authentic

Be brief

For more information about leadership and learning, please take a look at my new website

I made a website www.kellowlearning.com

Thinking about KellowLearning.com

Quick Start or Deep Dive?

This is the first of two blogs about making a website to celebrate the launch of KellowLearning.com. This is the 'Quick Start' blog for people who want to get going now. The second blog, called ‘Making a website: “The Deep Dive”’, is more reflective, and describes how the act of writing helped me to find out what I wanted to say on my website.

It’s possible to build a website in a few weeks if you know what you want to say. It took me more than six months. What I wanted was a creative and engaging site that communicates what I do, how I do it and why I do it. I think KellowLearning.com does that.


Where to start?
Making a website is all about making choices. Begin by answering the questions that people asked me when I told them I was making a website:

What do you do?
Who is your audience?
What are you offering that is special or different?
How can you communicate who you are, what you do, how and why you do it?

Do the thinking

Test your ideas on your friends.
Get a good website builder.
Choose a template off the web. A good web builder can advise you on the best options.
Assuming you can’t afford a copywriter, you will need time to write web copy

Choose a name, logo, and colours for your website

Decide on a name for your business, a log and a strapline. You also need to choose the colour scheme. What kind of online environment do you want to create? Choose welcoming colours that will encourage your visitors to linger and browse

Do the research

Learn from other websites. Consider both content and design
What are your competitors saying, and how do they say it?
What pages and features do they have?
How many clicks does it take to get you to the page you want?

Map out the content

Having decided what you do and what you offer, create pathways with clear signposting that make it easy for your visitors to find what they want

Connect with your audience

Who do you want to work with? Corporates? Government? NGOs? How do you want to sound? What kind of language and examples will engage your target audience?

Make it personal

Tell inspiring stories about what you have done, how you did it, and what it means to you. Use images that reinforce your messages. Ask for recommendations from your clients to show that you really do what you say you do.

Review, review, review
Having put your heart and soul into describing what, how and why you do it, get an editor to help you order your content and put your brilliant copy into some kind of structure. You won’t notice what needs to be changed or improved until you read your copy online. Ask critical friends to review your website, and be prepared to ignore their advice. What matters is what feels right to you.

How to be Happy in Love, and in Life

“You don’t know what it’s like when someone you thought loved one, goes away and does the same things with somebody else”

Jigsaw, Sybille Bedford, 1989

Pieces from a jigsaw of relationships

Here’s a blog from a volcanic island for anyone who wants to be love again. I’ve just finished reading Sybille Bedford’s autobiographical novel ‘Jigsaw’, and I can’t stop thinking about love. Maybe it’s the Sicilian heat, or possibly my medication, that cost twice as much as last night’s dinner. Whatever. Bedford’s Proustian narrative about inconstant, and unforgiving lovers, has got me thinking about my past relationships: what happened, and what I contributed, often, to make a difficult situation worse.

Patterns of behaviour

I need to make sense of the pieces in Bedford’s ‘Jigsaw’. What messages does she have about love and life? Imagine a real jigsaw depicting a French mediterranean town, north London, and Finchingfield, Essex. If you look at the whole picture, you can see small groups of people, in twos and threes, involved in different types of relationships. Take a closer look, and you will see patterns of behaviour that, for me, are uncomfortable.

The Pursuit of Love

In ‘Jigsaw’, Bedford describes many different relationships. I’ll try to summarise five of the most prominent.

Relationship One

A young woman and a young man have a one night stand. Later, the young man becomes increasingly abusive towards the young woman, because she does not want to sleep with him again.

Relationship Two 

A young man marries a young woman because she is very keen to marry him, and, having been engaged for a year, he feels it is the right thing to do. Once they are married, the young woman makes a habit of sniping at her husband, while cultivating admirers in a very public way.

Relationship Three

An older man has a long term unacknowledged relationship with a young woman. They live separately, and go on holiday together, once. After a number of years, the older man commits suicide over gambling debts.

Relationship Four

A married woman divorces her husband after he tells her that he is having an affair with someone else. The married woman insists on a divorce, saying: “Jamie has done wrong…he must bear the consequences.”

Relationship Five

A young man marries a much older woman. After some years of living happily together, the young man has an affair with a younger woman. His wife starts to drink, and becomes addicted to morphine. The young man still loves his wife, and wants to stay married to her. Eventually, he leaves, because he finds it too difficult to watch her self-destruct.

What can we learn?

What is Bedford’s message? If she had written a book called ‘How to be Happy in Love, and in Life’, perhaps she might have said this:

Have purpose in your life. Discover what you want to do, and stick to it.
The young woman in Relationship Two wanted to be world class tennis player. She didn’t succeed, because she was not physically strong enough. The narrator of ‘Jigsaw’, on the other hand, becomes a writer. Despite her many ups and downs, she is one of the few characters in the book who achieves some kind of lasting personal fulfillment – Maslow’s ‘Self-Actualisation’.

Learn to forgive, avoid jealousy and blame
Taking positions, making demands, and blaming other people, is what leads to the failure of four of the five relationships. In Relationship One, the young man blames the young woman for not wanting to sleep with him again. In Relationship Two, the young woman blames the young man for many things, including not being good at business. In Relationship Four, the young woman blames her husband because according to her principles, he did wrong and must suffer. And in Relationship Five, the older woman blames the young man for having an affair. Only the young woman in Relationship Three does not blame her lover.

Be kind, be empathetic, try to see things from the other person’s perspective
The older woman in Relationship Five has moments of seeing things through her husband’s eyes. However, she needs increasing doses of morphine to manage her rage. What if the older man in Relationship Three had asked himself what it was like for the younger woman to be his lover? He did not even know how she traveled to his apartment every night.
 
In ‘Jigsaw’, Sybille Bedford pieces together what she has learned about love and life. It's good learning, if only I could put it into practice...

Stromboli and London, 25-28 July 2013

PS Listen to Sybille Bedford on Desert Island Discs broadcast on 5 July 1998

The Pixar Pitch and Other Sales Tips from Dan Pink

If you need to brush up your selling and influencing skills, Dan Pink’s new book ‘To Sell is Human’ has some practical suggestions. Though I would not recommend all of them to all of my friends. Because selling is very personal, and you have to be yourself to engage people. As I found out. But I’ll tell you about that later. 

I sold young ladies for a living

Having recently gone freelance, I need to sell myself constantly. I used to make a living out of selling other people. I sold young ladies quite successfully. About one a week, on average. I was a recruitment consultant. Right now, I am trying to sell a new careers development workshop for recent graduates who want to work in sustainability. The drive for a green growth, coupled, sadly, with high youth unemployment, makes me suspect there is a need for a course that will help young people to help themselves find jobs. 

Don't sell what interests you

I’ve got a plan to deliver a course that will be an inspiring and memorable experience. But as Dan Pink says, I need to communicate not what interests me about the course, but what will attract potential participants. Forming a lifelong long network of people who want to work in sustainability is, to me, the key to future happiness and prosperity. Whereas the participants probably just want to know that handing over two hundred pounds will make a difference to their job prospects. What I am thinking about now is the need to have a clear message for potential participants. What is the goal of the course? What will they learn, and how will this help them find a job in sustainability? 

The PIxar Pitch

One of the tools that Dan Pink offers is ‘The Pixar Pitch’. Emma Coats, a former Pixar story artist, has created a six sentence template for an irresistible story: 

‘Once upon a time _____. Every day_____. One day_____. Because of that_____. Because of that_____. Until finally_____.’

And so it happened, that on a Holiday Monday, I tried to use Emma Coats' template to create a pitch for my workshop ‘Pathways to Sustainability Career’.

‘Once upon a time it was difficult to find a job in sustainability. Every day, young people applied for jobs, but it took a lot of time, and some gave up looking because of the rejections and the competition. One day, young people came together to learn more about jobs in sustainability, and what kind of skills and experience are needed. Because of that, young people wrote better applications and felt more energised and supported. Because of that, more young people got jobs in sustainability, and were able to influence change. Until finally, the network became so valuable both personally and professionally, that young people wondered why they had waited so long to get together.’

Questions work better than answers
Another of Dan Pink’s selling tips is that asking questions is a more effective way of engaging people than giving answers. Asking questions makes people think. So what do you think? Does my ‘PIxar PItch’ make you want to come on the course?

Selling is personal: be yourself
One more thing. I promised to tell you about my brush with inauthenticity when selling. I was trying to write a strap line for my website. I was so convinced by Dan Pink of the value of asking questions, that I turned my strapline into a question. I’m too embarrassed to share it with you. I sent my brilliant strap line to a friend who works in communications, and also to my web-designer, who happens to be American. I thought, being American, that she would like Dan Pink’s influencing style. Both my web designer and my friend came back with the same message: ‘Interesting idea! But it’s not you.’ They are, of course, quite right. But do read Dan Pink's book 'To Sell is Human'.

Thanks for reading my blog. If you liked this page, you might like to check out my business website which has more content on leadership and learning.

www.kellowlearning.com