WEEKLY UPDATE: Friendly Feedback

Summary: Honest feedback is essential to the quality of any product or service. This post provides a few helpful parameters to get you started on the road to constructive criticism, whether it be in the workplace, school, or arts world.

Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a showing of an independent filmmaker friend's short Non-Love-Song at the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. What a treat! The film was packaged with a number of other shorts, each exploring the themes of love and friendship, especially from a queer perspective. After the films were shown, there was a brief Q & A session with my friend Erik Gernand and the other cast members and directors. Then we audience members were asked to rate the films to our liking, to help provide some feedback to the filmmakers (and potential awards).

Tomorrow, I'll be treated to my own feedback when I hand in some of my written work to my fellow creative writing classmates. Today, I have feedback on the brain!

Honest feedback is essential to the quality of any product or service. Constructive criticism can be difficult to attain, however, particularly for the first-timer. If you struggle with this, here are some helpful parameters:

(1) Focus on the positive first. When you make someone feel good about his or her performance—whether that be work performance, academic or artistic achievement, or something else altogether—you alleviate their initial anxiety and make it easier for them to receive information clearly. (See my old post on cognitive functioning to understand this more.)

(2) Be specific. General information is okay to start with (such as, "Overall, this piece made me feel good"), but it isn't all that helpful in the long run. Clarify any vague statements by citing examples using the Who-What-When-Why-Where-How Rule: "Overall, this piece made me feel good, because it used upbeat music (what) and had fast-paced, comedic dialogue (what); I found myself tapping my toes and smiling (where or how it affected you)."

(3) Word negative feedback proactively. It's unhelpful to simply state, "I didn't like the storyline." This can easily be dismissed as a subjective difference of opinion. What is helpful is to issue a challenge to the person you're critiquing or to share one specific way a portion of their work could be improved. In example, "The storyline was very negative, and as a reader, I was turned off by this. Perhaps if you peppered it with at least some optimism here and there—maybe by introducing a happier character who can reinforce your hero's angst—this would be more digestible to a broader audience."

Constructive criticism in the workplace is imperative. As co-workers, we rely on each other's honesty to ensure that we're doing the best job possible. This is even more important in teamwork situations. Practice giving honest, helpful feedback to those around you. The more you can do this, the more you improve your world.

© KiKi Productions, Inc. 2009

TRULY SPEAKING: And Now for Something Completely Different (the Art of the Segue)

Summary: My colleague Tim Wilson has a great recent post to his Public Speaking Library blog about handling the unexpected with a smooth segue into your intended idea. This works not just at public presentations, but also in private conversations.

My colleague Tim Wilson writes a blog (The Public Speaking Library) for—who else?—public speakers. Whether you're a professional presenter by trade, a teacher with class or simply someone who delivers the occasional industry workshop, office pitch or random wedding toast, Tim has tips that can help YOU.

Written in bite-sized nuggets for easy digestion, his blog posts offer all sorts of advice that refreshes almost daily. You can search the blog for info. that's relevant to what you're facing.

One recent post is titled, "Handling the Unexpected." While it's geared toward those addressing a crowd, the fact is that Tim's suggestion are pertinent to people in a variety of situations, from one-on-one conversations (especially with a staff member or trainee) to difficult settings of mediation. In each of these times, a remarkable way to make a point is to put it in the form of a question—for example, "How do YOU think we should resolve the problem?"

Here's what Tim says about the subject:

"When you're asking ... a question in order to find a certain answer, sometimes someone says something that doesn't fit into your presentation. When this happens, the first thing you need to do is give the person credit for saying something. The next thing is to work on moving from their point to the point that you are looking for. One way to do this is to use the 'yes and' method. Once someone says something off of your topic, say something like, 'Yes, that is definitely one answer to the problem. And another thing to think about is ...,' then mention the point you wanted the person to bring up."

For more intimate circumstances—especially those where you're looking to teach another person (or a group of people), but want them to reach the same conclusions that you have on their own—it's vital to truly listen to the other's (or others') responses. Pay attention to their input, and see if you can weave it into the output that you're seeking (i.e., "I hear what you're saying about teamwork; I wonder if we could work as a team in this way ...").

Coming to a group consensus is important in conflict resolution, as well as audience participation. Using a well-crafted segue (see the definition below) can take you there—together.

Segue (SEG - way) - (v.) to proceed to what follows without a pause; to make a transition without interruption from one activity, topic, scene or part to another (as in, "She segued smoothly into the next story"); (n.) the act or instance of segueing; a transition to the next idea, etc.

And speaking of segues (how's that for a clumsy one?!), I've only gotten one response to the potential connection between the words conjugation and conjugal. So, keep looking for their correlation, friends!

© KiKi Productions, Inc. 2009

WORD OF THE WEEK: Can You Conjugate?

Summary: How do you conjugate words? What does the word conjugation even mean? Read on to learn these answers and more ...

Conjugation (CON - joo - GAY - shun) - (n.) verb inflection; the schematic arrangement of the inflectional forms of a verb; a set or class of verbs that have the same inflectional form.

Got it? No?? Well, allow me to explain:

Each verb (for instance, the word go) can be conjugated, or changed in form, to fit a special set of criteria that matches the sentence in which the word is being used. "I go to the store on Tuesdays." That criteria pertains not just to the sentence's tense—or when the verb's action took place (in the present equals "present tense," while in the past means the "past tense")—but also who or what is taking the action. A simple, 2-letter word like go is actually pretty complex for someone who's just learning the rules of English. There's: "I go," "you go," "we go," "they go," plus "I went yesterday" (and so forth)—however, "he goes" and "she goes" and even "I am going tomorrow" or "I have gone many times." And if you think this is confusing, try it in Latin!

This entire set of rules, complicated as they may be, are the rules of conjugation. (You may have noticed last week that I conjugated our Word of the Week, antithesis, into antithetical in Friday's post. If you did, you get a gold star for paying attention!)

By the way, there's a secondary definition of the word conjugation that is related to the word conjugal. If you can figure out the connection, you get a bonus star. (No dirty talk, please.)

Today's miniature English lesson was brought to you by the letter C and the number 4. Happy 40th birthday, Sesame Street! Thanks for helping to encourage my love of language and learning at such an early age—and for continuing to teach the kids we all know and love today.

© KiKi Productions, Inc. 2009

WEEKLY UPDATE: Taking the First Step

Summary: A year ago, I started a 12-step journey, based on the original 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. So many 12-step groups exist today; their premise is always the same: inner growth through intense self-honesty. Taking the first step is the most important part of this and any personal journey.

This week, I dusted off some old journals and workbooks and re-read them to get some perspective on my life. What a difference a year makes! One year ago this month, I started working with a 12-step program—based on the original 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous—in order to gain a deeper sense of personal responsibility and inner peace. (These two ideas may seem antithetical, but they can coexist!)

A number of different groups have co-opted the 12 steps for a variety of different reasons—from staying sober to breaking abusive cycles in any number of areas. (See Wikipedia's list of just some of the growing number of programs available today.) My own first introduction to working the 12-step concept was through a prosperity consciousness class.

Gaining intense personal insight is the ultimate goal of any 12-step-based course or program. And the first step—with any personal journey—is always the most important, for it's with that first footfall that you make your commitment to your course. And none of us can move forward without serious honesty, both with ourselves and others.

Here is a generic version of the 12 steps:

(1) Admit I am powerless over (my problem); that my life has become unmanageable (because of my futile efforts to control the problem)

(2) Come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity (this often varies based on religious/spiritual beliefs)

(3) Make a decision to turn my will & my life over to the care of this power as I understand it

(4) Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself

(5) Admit to this power, myself, & another human being the exact nature of my wrongs

(6) Am entirely ready to have this higher power remove all these defects of my character

(7) Humbly ask this higher power to remove my shortcomings

(8) Make a list of all the people I've harmed, & become willing to make amends to them all

(9) Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so injures them or others

(10) Continue to take personal inventory, & when I am wrong, promptly admit it

(11) Seek through prayer & meditation to improve my conscious contact with the power greater than myself as I understand this power, praying only for knowledge of (my power's) will for me and the ability to carry that out

(12) Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, try to carry this message to others (who face my problem), & to practice these principles in all my affairs


© KiKi Productions, Inc. 2009

TRULY SPEAKING: Working Through Anxiety

Summary: We can be very unaware of the real level of our anxiety as it appears to others. Knowing the continuum of this energy force, what it does to the brain and body, and tricks for coping with it, quelling it or even converting it, can turn our nervous speaking experiences into exciting success stories. Read on for more!

Anxiety can manifest in a variety of ways, from blushing to nervous tics to full-blown panic attacks. What these look like on the outside is often vastly different from how they feel to the person who's in their throes.

Coincidentally, what seems the most heightened to us can be completely invisible to someone we're addressing; and that which we're unaware of, ourselves, is often the most distracting to our audience. To the outsider (or to the audience), blushing may be barely noticeable, especially on a darker complected speaker. But if you've ever blushed in your life, you know it can feel like your face is on fire! Nervous tics, on the other hand, may be distracting from the speaker's message: I recently heard a speaker who unconsciously clears his throat several times per sentence, but is hardly aware that he's doing so. Meanwhile, panic attacks can go totally unnoticed by others. But panic attacks can be so severe to the person who's having one that he or she may actually visit the emergency room with the honest belief, "I'm dying!"

When anxiety occurs, our brain's cognitive functioning is severely impacted, and negatively so. The body creates a "fight-or-flight" mentality, literally wanting to run away or engage in combat. Simply standing still and pretending to be 'fine' does nothing to quench the internal need to engage or flee the conflict at hand—even if the conflict is only imaginary.

Many statistics on public speaking show that the majority of people—in cultures all over the world—are more afraid of addressing an audience than they are of water, heights, flying, spiders, snakes or even death! Speaking in public makes us quite vulnerable, not just to the judgment of others, but to our own perceptions of their criticisms and to our judgments of ourselves.

Here are some quick tips to making anxiety actually work for you when you speak:

(1) Notice your pulse and your breath. If your heart is fluttering in your chest, you're nervous. Long, slow, deep breaths (taken from both the diaphragm and the lungs to expand the belly and chest) can lower pulse and slow the heart rate. Oxygen circulates through the body and helps to automatically calm your entire system, improving cognitive function and focus. Take at least two deep breaths in a row before you return to your normal breathing, then notice your heart rate again. Repeat this technique as necessary.

(2) Pay attention to your self-talk. When we're extremely keyed up about something, we often vituperate ourselves mentally. This can create a vicious cycle of anxiety. Say something to yourself now (in your head) about public speaking. Where in your head does your inner voice resonate? What kind of tone does it have? You can modify this inherent voice by slowing it down, and/or mimicking a mother cooing to a child. Speaking to yourself in a nurturing tone makes you calmer almost immediately.

(3) Make anxiety into excitement. In situations that call for high-energy responses, such as addressing a large group, calming yourself too much can work against you. In times like these, it's important to remember that nervousness and excitement are simply different levels of the same emotion: On one end of the scale—the high end—comes excitement, even elation; on the lower, more negative end comes nervousness, followed by anxiety, panic, and paranoia. Actors use a number of voice and body exercises to stretch and warm up that are geared toward converting anxiety and negativity into the more positive energy of excitement. See this list of books and audio resources on the subject compiled by The Association of Theatre Movement Educators.

While the practice of any one of the above techniques can help eradicate anxiety, they can work even better in combination.

© KiKi Productions, Inc. 2009