Monthly Archives: May 2013

Silence and Ideas

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In 4 B.C., Herod Archelaus, a well-known politician and the Tetrarch of Judea, sat down in the chair of the equivalent of his local barbershop. “How would you like your hair trimmed?” asked the talkative barber.

Archelaus responded, “In silence.”

A lot can be said for silence. Silence gives you time to think about what you plan to say later in the day, thus improving communication skills. Silence encourages your companion to talk. Silence exercises the mind. Some of my best ideas have come to me in the silence of early morning as I do my regular walk through the streets of Fort Thomas.

Learn to practice silence. Plan a certain time of day for silence. Find a place in your home or work where you have privacy and can engage in a period of silence. When you are silent and let your mind go, you will sometimes remember a task that needs doing or you will think of a person whom you have not given attention to that will encourage you to give that person a call.

Often the silence will be a spiritual experience for you. You may think about God, or blessings you have that you have taken for granted. Trappist Thomas Merton said, “A man who loves God necessarily loves silence.” Relaxing your body and giving yourself needed rest offers physiological benefits.

When I am in town, I usually spend a day a week in the Mercantile Library, located in downtown Cincinnati on the 11th floor of the Mercantile Building. This is far from the busy and talkative workforce that surrounds the facility. Often only a handful of people are present, and silence is an unwritten rule for all who enter.

Because of silence, I do more speech and sermon preparation and writing than I would in two days working in my office at home.

Consider silence one of your tools for improving the quality of your life. We pay respect to someone by having a moment of silence. Herman Melville said, “All profound things and emotions of things are preceded and attended to by silence.”

Embrace silence. Perhaps Simon and Garfunkel said it best in their song, “The Sound of Silence:” “People talking without speaking. People hearing without listening. People writing songs that voices never share. And no one dared disturb the sound of silence.”

The Green Monster: A Case Study of Handling Customer Complaints

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Our friend Tom owns a waste management company called Green Monster Recycling and Disposal. All his trucks are green and his recycling program emphasizes being green. He has a thriving business in a small Middle Tennessee community. You can imagine the challenges of satisfying hundreds of customers a week. He has great stories about what his crews find in trash cans, strange questions customers ask, and reasons why a bill has not been paid.

In spite of his great concern to satisfy each customer, he gets about 5 – 8 complaint calls a week. He told me that after six years he has a system that works for him in dealing with the difficulty of communicating with a dissatisfied client. Whatever the complaint, as soon as they voice their complaint, he follows with a three-part response:
“I understand how this is upsetting to you.”
“I apologize for this inconvenience.”
“What can I do to resolve the problem?”

Tom said this has been the best way he has found to defuse the customer’s anger. Even though the customer may be at fault, this approach calms the person and allows him or her to listen to whatever Tom has to say. By asking what they want him to do, the customer is placed in a position to help solve the problem and gives Tom time to think.

We all have our own methods for dealing with the difficult person, and this one I believe has real merit. Defusing the situation with humility and understanding can go a long way in developing a good relationship with difficult people, whether co-workers, friends, or (no surprise here!) family.

 

Adapting to Your Audience During Breaks

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If you are delivering a long presentation that includes a break or you are the next speaker and a break precedes your presentation, spend time among the people who will be or who are in your audience by listening to people during breaks.

For example, in using a birthday-matching exercise, I have 25 people from the audience give their birthdays looking for a match—two people having the same birthday. As I listened to each one recently, I was so busy concentrating on making sure I didn’t leave anyone out that I did not recognize the obvious: one of the participants gave the month and day of our seminar. In other words, that day was his birthday and I did not recognize it!

At the break, I overheard one of the audience members mention that fact. I asked who that person was and he pointed out that individual to me. As soon as we came back from the break, I began by asking if anyone had a birthday besides the one in our earlier exercise. When no one raised his or her hand, I asked the person for his name and we all sang “Happy Birthday” to him. This made up for my missing this fact earlier, and the group acting in unison created a positive audience-speaker relationship.

I have not done this regularly in the past. Part of the reason is that if I have been speaking, people are using the break to ask me questions and I don’t have the opportunity to mix and mingle near the snack and drink tables.

But after this experience I will work harder to gain feedback during the break. This was especially important in this situation since part of the following section of content was improving listening skills. (Someone might have said, “Steve, I know someone who does seminars on improving listening—just in case you’re interested!”)

You can adapt to the audience before the presentation begins by talking to people from the organization. You can go online to learn about the group and even search for key people in the organization on the Internet. But don’t forget to adapt during your presentation as well. Mixing and mingling during break time can be invaluable to the rest of your presentation.