Category: communication

communication, management, relationships

My Year of Hopefulness – Get a Leg Up by Backing Down

Christa Avampato

I get frustrated with high-strung, territorial people. They’re a little too much for me. I don’t understand them. During a recent lunch, I was talking to one of my mentors about a few people I’ve interacted with that have these unfortunate character traits. I have been struggling to find a way to get along with them. It seems that what ever I say or do, I always come out on the losing end of the deal. 


“You have to disarm them,” my mentor said. “They are fearful people. And if you meet them with any kind of resistance, they become more fearful. And more territorial. And more high-strung.” 

“So how can I win?” I asked. “Just back down,” she said. 

I was skeptical. I’m a “throw it all out on the table and sort through it” kind of person. That doesn’t work with high-string people. The truth is scary to them, especially when presented with extreme honesty. Though I don’t like doing this, I understood today that with high-strung people you have to take away the argument. Completely. I would prefer to just have a healthy debate, make a decision, and move on knowing we all said our piece, held hands, and jumped together. Won’t work with high-string territorials. So I have to find a new way. 

Today one of these people phoned me up after sending a particularly rude email telling it was my responsibility to do something. She kindly cc’d me while responding to the person asking her for a favor. I was mildly irritated but I wanted to follow my mentor’s advice and take away the argument. So I replied that even though I wasn’t quite sure it was my responsibility to do this particular task, I’d be glad to help. No problem.

Rather than just washing her hands of the event and moving on knowing I’d do the task, she felt the need to call me and say that if I didn’t really think it was my responsibility, she’d take the task because if it was really her responsibility then she wanted to do this. (You can imagine my patience wearing thin with this kind of conversation.) So I let her talk herself round and round in circles and once she came up for air, I told her I’d be glad to help with the task or glad to turn it back over to her, whatever she preferred. In a huff, she hung up. 5 minutes later I got an email saying that she’d take care of it. My mentor’s advice worked. 

This was a good lesson to learn. While we all have a normal method of operation, it’s important to remember that our method doesn’t work with every kind of personality. We have to adjust our approach and craft our communications carefully and creatively depending upon the audience. If we are our own brand, then we must remember that our messaging needs tweaking depending upon what we want to accomplish with whom. It’s not easy and it takes patience and practice. Once we get the hang of it, this method saves us a lot of frustration, time, and once in a while it might even clear some items off our to-do list.  
communication, culture, language, technology

Acronym City

Christa Avampato

Ever have a conversation with someone, in English, and then all of a sudden feel like you’ve stepped into a foreign land without moving from where you are? My friend, Kelly, has the wonderful quality of being friendly to EVERYONE. On occasion this will get her into trouble, like one recent night at Joshua Tree. 


She was speaking to a guy at the bar (she dubbed him “Jersey Johnny” as his two favorite subjects of conversation were himself and New Jersey) who was there with his friends, though seemed much more interested in Kelly than in his friends. To be honest, she thought he was a bit of a jerk, but given her inability to be anything but friendly, she kept talking to him. He was going on and on about another party he was supposed to go to. “So then why are you staying?” Kelly asked. He leaned over to her and quietly said, “Well, I have some IOI here and I want to see what happens.” Huh? 

Kelly though that my constantly-connected life would leave me well-versed in this type of acronym speak. Nope – this is a new one for me. Jersey Johnny went on to say that he felt some of the other girls in the bar were checking him out so he wanted to see if any of them might make a move – he had Indications of Interest (IOI) from them. 

Now this story left me ROTFLOL (Rolling On The Floor, Laughing Out Loud – one of the favorite sayings of my friend, Lon) though prompted me to consider all of the ways we develop and re-develop language, and how confusion could arise by not saying exactly the words we intend. For example, Kelly could have thought Johnny meant “Internal Operating Income” or “Index of Irritation”. You see how easily this whole speaking-in-acronym thing could backfire?

So how wide spread is this possible acronym confusion, and how are we supposed to sort it all out if these handy little time-savers are creeping in to pick-up lines at bars? Fear not – there is an on-line acronym dictionary with thousands of common and not-so-common acronyms. (What we might really need is an iPhone app to whip out at a moment’s notice, as evidenced by Kelly’s situation with Jersey Johnny.) NFW, you say? LNKO, folks. This could be MC for your social life, particularly those of you who are into OLD. I am N/J – you really cannot take these suckers out of context, lest you could end up with a BFM on your hands. 

Here are a few common acronyms whose confusion could have dire consequences:
WTF – Welcome to Finland!, Wild Turkey Federation, What The Frick (polite version)
HOTD – Hottie of the Day, Hair Of The Dog, Head Of Train Device
BFF – Best Friends Forever, Black Footed Ferret, Buffered Flip-Flop 
STD – Sexually Transmitted Disease, Save The Date, Safely Tolerated Dose 
BFD – Big Frickin’ Deal (polite version), Big Fat Disclaimer, Burger Fries Drink
 
And if you’re wondering “AYS?” with all these acronyms, the answer is “YBBI”! 

communication, corporation, culture, job, leadership

Opinion as fact not accepted here

Christa Avampato

My friend, Kelly, always had a saying in graduate school that she’d repeat whenever someone in class decided to spout off their belief system to chew up class time and to hear themselves talk. She’d say something like, “why do people think it’s okay to state opinion as fact?” Today at work I was reminded of that saying during my team meeting.


We were discussing some of the alignment issues our department has, not on our specific team but elsewhere in the organization. I think we might have all been getting a little too down on the structure of the business as a whole. 

One of the many things I love about my boss is that she has a great way of recognizing a negative attribute and then in the next breathe providing a unique positive that we hadn’t considered. She’s been at the company for a number of years in several different roles and one thing that she loves about the company is hearing the CEO speak. To quote her directly, “there is no CEO better to get you inspired about your business. In the world of CEOs, he is as good as it gets.” Immediately I thought, “oh, he must be very good at keeping people’s spirits up and encouraging them.” My boss followed up her statement with, “it is fascinating to hear him speak because he speaks only about facts. He never gives a speech based on opinions. Ever.”  

Now, I’ve heard a lot of speeches from leaders but my boss really got me thinking back to all the speeches I’ve ever heard. Some people throw a bunch of positive quotes and pretty pictures onto powerpoint slides and call that a motivational speech. They put up lists of books and websites they follow and reference and call themselves a resource. A lot of leaders do that. Many of them pace back and forth on the stage and say how much better they are than the competition, akin to cheerleaders. Most leaders do not base every speech in fact. Heck, some never base their speeches on fact. Now I find my new CEO even more remarkable, especially because our company, being in financial services, is under the microscope of every industry analyst, reporter, and rival. A tough climate to state just the facts, making my CEO’s continued honesty all the more worthy of admiration.

For the last three weeks I’ve been standing tall when I tell people the company I work for. Now I know I can stand even taller, up on my tippy toes if necessary, because all of this pride I have in the company is not based on opinion or belief or a “feeling”. It’s based in fact, and that feels great.
communication, community, technology, Twitter

Good PR for Twitter

Christa Avampato

“What are you doing?” is the only question that Twitter, the microblogging site, asks you to answer. In 140 characters or less, please. I had heard of the site a while ago though didn’t really get into it until March when I attended the BlogHer Business Conference in NYC. There, nearly all the attendees were twittering away, giving their feedback on what was happening at the conference in bite-size “tweets”. Four months later, I’m twittering several times a day!

USA today ran an article today about the phenomenon that is Twitter. Its popularity has grown exponentially, and much, MUCH faster than the founders could have predicted. As a result, the site crashes fairly often, though is usually back up and running quickly. Still, the need for reliability is strong, and growing stronger by the hour, in this increasingly interconnected world. This reliability is particularly an issue when companies want to get in on the act and figure out how to leverage the conversations that are going on out there. As Bob Davis said, “Speed is Life.” And to have speed, we need reliable connections.

I follow a few companies on Twitter – one being the March of Dimes. I met a small group of their Team Members and these women were light years ahead of many companies when it comes to social media. And it’s amazing how often I have been contacted by others who read my writing in one media channel or another, and then decided to “follow” me.

And the most amazing feature I find with Twitter: most of my followers I’ve never even met in person. Unlike other spaces on line where I spend time like this blog, my website, or Facebook, Twitter is a place where I can leave a short snippet, a passing thought, and then spend the majority of time checking out what others are doing. And there is a load of fantastic information, research, and insight in those 140 characters. For the overwhelmed, people or businesses, Twitter is a great place to get in on the conversation with minimal effort and heartache. Twitter is the art of brevity at its best.