The Articulate CEO

Qantas Finish 2011 A Winner - For All The Wrong Reasons!

The list that stops a nation - Australia's Biggest PR Disasters of the Year - is out and in an unprecedented achievement, Qantas won three of the top 10 gaffes of 2011 when the list was released by social networking tracking site Cyber Chatter. It's never been done before and it is hard to see how anyone could ever do it again but, then again, Qantas is still with us and 2012 is a brand new year. Who would bet against them? So, here it is, Australia's Biggest PR Disasters of the Year together with links to news.com.au for anyone who missed the stories first time around.

1. The Qantas grounding inconvenienced and angered a nation. People are still waiting for refunds yet CEO Alan Joyce still has a job.

2. "Qantas Luxury" Twitter scandal. The plan was to get people tweeting good things about Qantas. They got thousands of complaints.

3. Troubled footballer Brendan Fevola's contract termination with the Brisbane Lions ends up in court.

4. Tony Abbott freezes during a TV interview with Channel 7's Mark Riley in the "shit happens" tape.

5. Qantas "golliwog" social media promo causes a race brouhaha.

6. Ricky Nixon and the fallout from his unseemly association with a teenager.

7. Indigenous writer Larissa Behrendt describes bestiality program as "less offensive than Bess Price", an Aboriginal woman in favour of the Northern Territory intervention.

8. Kyle Sandilands goes on a personal vendetta against a journo. Austereo loses more than 20 advertisers and the shock jock is forced into a humiliating apology.

9. Australian Defence Force cadet is violated when she is filmed having sex.

10. Gasp Jeans become a mockery after their startling email response to a customer complaint goes viral.

Are We Over Being Over-Connected?

The backlash against 24-hour connectivity is gathering pace around the world amid concerns that the lines between work-life and personal life are becoming more and more blurred.

Workers who find themselves answering work emails on their smartphones after the end of their shifts in Brazil can now qualify for overtime under a new law. The new legislation was approved by President Dilma Rousseff last month and basically says company emails to workers are equivalent to orders given directly to the employee.

Brazil is one country that is well and truly over-connected. Brazil has a population of 195 million people but the number of mobile subscribers exceeded 210.5 million in August last year, according to the Brazilian National Telecommunications Agency (Anatel).

Subscriptions were growing at about 3 million a month, mostly from internet-enabled phones. There were more than 25 million internet-enabled mobile phones in the country last year.

Labor attorneys told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper the new law makes it possible for workers answering emails after hours to ask for overtime pay. I'm not sure how successful such a request would be but it is probably only a matter of time before we see it tested in the courts.

This issue of over-connectivity has now started to pop up in several corners of the world.

In May, Chicago policeman Jeffrey Allen filed a class action suit against the city, asking for unpaid overtime compensation. He argues his connection means the city of Chicago owes him lots of overtime. His attorney Paul Geiger says it's a simple case.

"What we are saying is he's using this mobile device at the behest of the Police Department very routinely and very often off duty and not being compensated for all the time spent on the device doing the city's work," Geiger says.

The city gave Allen a BlackBerry when he worked in a unit determining which assets of criminals police could seize. Susan Prince, an attorney with Business and Legal Resources, says the deciding factor in this dispute is likely to be the Fair Labor Standards Act, which governs wage and overtime provisions for American workers.

"Basically, it comes down to whether an employee is exempt or non-exempt," she says. "Exempt employees, they make the same salaries no matter how many hours they work during a week, so using a BlackBerry from home at night is not an overtime issue for them. But when you're dealing with non-exempt employees, they have to be paid for all the time they work."

It is a case that will be watched very carefully in the US and around the world. Regardless of the outcome we are already seeing an impact. In December, German carmaker Volkswagen agreed with labour representatives to switch off Blackberry emails after hours. The move came after French IT company Atos announced plans to eliminate company internal emails by 2013.

German telco Deutsche Telekom and consumer goods maker Henkel have also introduced measures to curb after-hours emails to reduce the pressure on workers to be always on call.

Are we truly over over-connectedness or is this a convenient way to excuse our own mobile addiction... after all we can always switch off can't we?

 

 

Something For Everyone - The Barnum Effect

Ever wondered why people seem so easily conned by slick talkers? The answer may lie in a phenomenon known as the Barnum Effect. The Barnum effect is the name given to a type of subjective validation in which a person finds personal meaning in statements that could apply to many people.

For example:

You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. At times you have serious doubts whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing.

If these statements sound like they came from a news stand astrology book, that may be because they did. Such statements are sometimes called Barnum statements and they are an effective element in the repertoire of anyone doing readings: astrologers, palm readers, psychics, H.R. Managers and so on.

When statements like this appear on things like personality inventories that people believe have been especially prepared for them alone, they often validate the accuracy of such statements and thereby give validity to the instrument used to arrive at them. If Barnum statements are validated when they have originated during a psychic reading for example, the validation is taken as also validating the psychic powers of the medium.You see the same kinds of statements and conclusions for that matter in things as diverse as economic analyses, school reports and performance evaluations.

Incidentally, "Barnum effect" is an expression that seems to have originated with psychologist Paul Meehl, in deference to circus man P. T. Barnum's reputation as a master psychological manipulator who is said to have claimed "we have something for everybody."

And that about sums it up - they are statements in which there is something for everyone.

Clever Hans Phenomenon & The Origins of Non Verbal Communication

Ever wonder how the subject of non verbal communication ever came to our attention? The answer is Clever Hans Phenomenon and it dates back to the early 1890's. It refers to a form of involuntary and unconscious cuing that sometimes happens in communication and the story itself is about a horse who responded to questions requiring mathematical calculations by tapping his hoof. Sound familiar?

If asked by his master, William Von Osten, what is the sum of 3 plus 2, Hans the horse would tap his hoof five times. It appeared the animal was responding to human language and was capable of grasping mathematical concepts. In 1891 Von Osten began showing Hans to the public and the horse amazed all who saw him.

It was eventually discovered by Oskar Pfungst, however, that the horse was responding to subtle physical cues (what is called ideomotor reaction). In other words Hans was responding to a simple, involuntary postural adjustment by the questioner, which was his cue to start tapping, and an unconscious, almost imperceptible head movement, which was his cue to stop. Yet, more than a dozen scientists observed Hans and were convinced there was no signaling or trickery. They were impressed that Hans performed almost as well without Von Osten as with him. But the scientists were wrong.

The horse was simply a channel through which the information the questioner unwittingly put into the situation was fed back to the questioner. The fallacy involved treating the horse as the source of the message rather than as a channel through which the questioner's own message is reflected back. The key here is that it happens unconsciously. Von Osten was not engaging in fraud  - he just didn't quite realise just how clever his horse really was.

Pfungst noted that when the correct answer was not known to anyone present, Clever Hans didn't know it either. And when the horse couldn't see the person who did know the answer, the horse didn't respond correctly. This led Pfungst to conclude that the horse was getting visual cues, albeit subtle ones. It turned out that Von Osten and others were cuing Hans unconsciously by "tensing their muscles until Hans produced" the correct answer. The horse truly was clever, not because he understood human language but because he could perceive very subtle muscle movements. More important, Pfungst discovered that people can unconsciously communicate information to others by subtle movements and that some animals can perceive these unconscious movements. It was only a matter of time before psychologists would be investigating nonverbal influence among humans.

So there you go - the story of a remarkable horse and the origins of the study of non-verbal communication. It is just a pity we don't recognise this remarkable facility for intuition that some animals and humans have and instead focus on the nonsensical pseudoscience offered up by psychics, personality profilers and quacks of all descriptions when, if genuine, they are just sensitive to the unconscious signaling of others.

The Tiger Woods Effect & How Competition Can Backfire

I often talk about the 'symbolic' channel of communication and how ofetn it can lead to results that we wouldn't necessarily expect. One place where you think symbolism would do its intended job, however, is reward and recognition systems. After all recognising a brilliant employee should – in theory – be an inspiration to colleagues.

Unfortunately, due to the Tiger Woods Effect, this is not always the case. What is the Tiger Woods Effect I hear you ask? Put simply, it means that someone at the top of their game can not only put off everyone else but can actually lead them to put in less effort.

Chicago's Northwestern University analysed the performances of golfers from 1999 to 2010 while Woods was far and away the world number one.

When he was at the peak of his powers, other top players shot worse scores in tournaments in which he participated than they did in similar events if he was absent, as if his presence inhibited them. 

And because of this, Woods earned around $6 million more from these contests than he would have done if his rivals had played their normal game, economists found.

This remarkable effect on golfers could apply just as much in a workplace. In particular, the Tiger factor could affect offices where one worker keeps winning ‘employee of the month’ or regular bonuses for making the most sales.

Instead of trying to compete, other staff – like Tiger’s opponents – simply stop trying as hard because they don’t think they are going to win.

You are probably thinking 'Nah, that would only affect the losers' but, in actual fact, when Woods played in a tournament, other players shot nearly a full stroke higher and the effect was strongest among the top-ranked players, who would be in direct competition with Woods for the highest payouts.

The results suggest business should be more careful when trying to get their employees to be more competitive with each other and is yet another example of just how complicated the symbolic channel in communication is.

Swearing Can Be Good For You!

If you have the misfortune to hit your thumb with a hammer then the best thing you can do to help cope with the pain is turn the air blue. That's right, swearing can provide effective relief from pain - but only if you use it judiciously, according to research.

Experts found swearing helped people cope with pain in the short-term but the frequency of swearing played an important role.

Researchers at Keele University's School of Psychology recruited 71 undergraduates who were asked to carry out a cold-water challenge while either repeating a swear word or a non-swear word.

The students put their hand in room temperature water for three minutes to act as a control before plunging it into cold 5C water for as long as they could while repeating their word.

The level of perceived pain together with a change in heart rate were compared while people swore or said their non-swear word.

The group was also asked about how much they swore in daily life and this was analysed together with their level of pain tolerance.

Writing in the Journal of Pain, the authors concluded: "Swearing increased pain tolerance and heart rate compared with not swearing.

"Moreover, the higher the daily swearing frequency, the less was the benefit for pain tolerance when swearing, compared with when not swearing.

"The more often participants reported swearing in daily life, the less extra time they were able to hold their hand in ice cold water when they repeated a swear word, compared with when they repeated a non-swear word."

Dr Richard Stephens, a senior lecturer in psychology at Keele, said: "People who don't swear very much in daily life can keep their hand in roughly double the amount of time when they swear compared to when they don't swear.

"But the people who swear the most do not get any extra benefit."

Dr Stephens added: "Swearing is a very emotive form of language and our findings suggest that over-use of swear words can water down their emotional effect.

"Used in moderation, swearing can be an effective and readily available short-term pain reliever if, for example, you are in a situation where there is no access to medical care or painkillers.

"However, if you're used to swearing all the time, our research suggests you won't get the same effect.

"Normal language is associated with the cortex (the outer layer) of the left side of the brain, but swearing seems to activate deeper parts of the brain more associated with emotions.

"We are just scratching the surface of how swearing can influence our emotions and how it can have impact in different situations.

"In the context of pain, swearing appears to serve as a simple form of emotional self-management.

"Whether swearing has beneficial effects in other contexts is something we would like to explore in the future."

So there you go - it's official, swearing can be good for you. I can't wait to tell Mum!

How To Deliver A Great Introduction

Introductions are so important that professional speakers usually provide their own. They know what it is like to be on the receiving end of a bad introduction - they spend the first ten minutes of their speech desperately trying to win their audience back.

The worst experiences are when you have provided an introduction but the MC (normally some bumbling employee because the organisation are yet to learn the value of a real MC) decides not to use it and instead provide their own moment of genius. It's a bit like watching a car crash - you know it isn't going to be pretty but you can't turn away so you have to resign yourself to the carnage ahead.

The problem of course is that people don't know how to introduce someone. So here are some quick tips on how to put together a great introduction.

If you’re writing an introduction, there are basically three questions that you need to answer for your audience:

• What is the speech about?
• Why are we discussing this topic?
• Why is this the person to talk about it?

Let's deal with the first question - what is the speech about? The key here is not to give away too much - you are providing the introduction, not the speech. Make sure you explain the subject matter succinctly and in a context that your audience can relate to.

In fact, that context is really what the second question is all about; why are we discussing this topic? Essentially we are answering the questions why here and why now. It is important to convey why this topic is of particular importance at this moment in time.

Thirdly, of course, why is this the person to talk about it? What are the credentials, experience or expertise this speaker has that gives him or her the authority to address this particular subject? Not all of their experience and credentials - just the ones that relate to this particular audience.

Your role in all of this is to set the tone for what is to come so don't oversell it and don't undersell it either. Keep it simple, get to the point and, above all, remain relevant to your audience.

Oh... and, by the way, the very last words out of your mouth should be the name of the speaker - that's who we are all here for!

The Truth About Graphology - Another Communication Con

Graphology is the study of handwriting, especially when employed as a means of analyzing character and personality traits. The people who practise it will often claim to be handwriting experts. They are not. Real handwriting experts are actually known as forensic document examiners, not as graphologists. Forensic document examiners consider loops, dotted "i's" and crossed "t's," letter spacing, slants, heights, ending strokes and so on. They examine handwriting to detect authenticity or forgery i.e. is that a real signature on a document?

Graphologists examine the same things but for a different reason. They believe the loops, dotted "i's" and crossed "t's," letter spacing, slants, heights, ending strokes and so on are physical manifestations of unconscious mental functions. In other words, they believe handwriting can tell us about personality, aptitude and attitude. It doesn't. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that the unconscious mind is a reservoir of truth about a person, much less that graphology provides a gateway to that reservoir.

Graphology is claimed to be useful for everything from understanding health issues, morality and past experiences to hidden talents and mental problems. However, in properly controlled, blind studies, where the handwriting samples contain no content that could provide non-graphological information upon which to base a prediction, graphologists do no better than chance at predicting personality traits.

The techniques of these "experts" are really nothing more than guesses or deductions based not so much on such things as the pressure exerted on the page, spacing of words and letters, etc but rather the content of the writing itself and background information about the writer. Though graphologists deny it, the content of the writing is one of the more important factors in graphological character assessment. Likewise, it is easy to offer up an analysis of the handwriting of a famous person about whom much information is already in the public domain. If handwriting can really tell us so much then the blind studies mentioned earlier should have no trouble backing it up. The fact that they don't and worse, that any one of us can have the same kind of hit rate in these studies that the so-called handwriting experts have tells us all we need to know.

Graphology is another pipe dream for those who want a quick and dirty decision making process to tell them who to marry, who did the crime, who they should hire, what career they should seek, where the good hunting is, where the water, oil, or buried treasure is, etc. It is appealing to those who are impatient with such troublesome matters as research, evidence analysis, reasoning, logic, and hypothesis testing. If you want results and you want them now and you want them stated in strong, certain terms, graphology is for you. If, however, you can live with reasonable probabilities and uncertainty, you might try another method to pick a spouse or hire an employee... like flipping a coin.

Subliminal Messaging - You Can't Hear What Ain't There!

Let's tackle an oldie but a goodie - subliminal messaging. Now to quickly put everyone in the picture the subliminal is below the liminal (the smallest detectable sensation). Obviously anything truly below the level of detectable sensation could not, by definition, be perceived. However, when people talk about subliminal messaging they generally mean messages that are below the threshold of conscious perception. There is a widespread belief, not strongly supported by empirical research, that without being aware of its presence or content, a person's behavior can be significantly affected by subliminal messages. Thus, it is believed that one can influence behavior by surreptitiously appealing to the subconscious mind with words and images. If this were true, then advertisers could manipulate consumer behavior by hiding subliminal messages in their ads. The implications are enormous. The government, me or even a small weasel by the name of Jimmy, could control our minds and bodies by secretly communicating to us subliminally. Learners could learn while listening to music embedded with subliminal messages.

Unfortunately, the research done in this area has shown us that the effects are somewhere between slim and zero.

The fact that there is almost no empirical support for the usefulness of subliminal messaging has not, of course, prevented numerous industries from producing and marketing tapes which allegedly communicate directly with the unconscious mind. There are tapes out there that do everything from stopping smoking to coaching the "listener" to have courage or believe in his or her power to accomplish great things. Consumers in the USA actually spend more than $50 million each year on subliminal self-help products!

It is true that we can perceive things even though we are not conscious of perceiving them. However, for those who put messages in tapes and then record music over the messages so that the messages are drowned out by the music or other sounds, it might be useful to remember that if the messages are drowned out by other sounds, the only perceptions one can have are of the sounds drowning out the messages. Get the message? There is no evidence of anyone hearing a message which is buried beneath layers of other sounds to the point where the message does not distinctly stand out. Of course, if the message distinctly stood out, it would not be subliminal.That's why advertisers rely on 'liminal' advertising - it has a much better hit rate.

The belief in the power of subliminal messaging to manipulate behavior seems to have originated in 1957 with James Vicary, an advertising promoter who claimed to increase popcorn sales by some 58% and Coke sales by some 18% in a New Jersey movie theater simply by flashing very briefly the messages "Drink Coca-Cola" and "Hungry - Eat Popcorn." Even though the claim has been shown to be a hoax, and even though no one has been able to duplicate the event, belief in the legend lingers.

So, for everyone who was worried that subliminal messaging might be impacting their behavior somehow you can relax - it's all the obvious messaging that is doing that. And for those of you who are hoping to change your behavior or become Superman by listening to something in your sleep you might as well save your money because you are probably already braindead.

Part II: The Myers Briggs Type Indicator - Does It Work?

In a word... no. Firstly, a common misconception about the MBTI is that helps determine the kinds of things that people will be good at by showing their aptitude. That way you can use it to figure out career and industry suitability in the workforce for example. Unfortunately it doesn't do that. What it actually does is try to show your preferences. So Myers-Briggs isn't about figuring out your ability but rather determining your comfort zone. It identifies the types of activities you'll like and be most content with; not necessarily those at which you'll be particularly good at.

In fact, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator's practical use is overwhelmingly unscientific, and it's often criticized for this. Criticism starts with the fact that neither Jung nor Myers and Briggs ever employed scientific studies to develop or test their concepts. Instead they rely on their own observations, anecdotes, and intuitions. Horoscopes have a greater claim to scientific method than that!

Actually one obvious thing that Myers-Briggs has in common with horoscopes is its tendency to describe each personality type using only positive words. It is part of why horoscopes are so popular - they pretty much always tell people what they want to hear. They also use phrases that most people generally like to believe are true such as "You have enormous potential." They're also popular because they are presented as being personalized based on the person's sign. This has been called the Forer Effect, after psychologist Bertram Forer who, in 1948, gave a personality test to his students and then gave each one a supposedly personalized analysis. The impressed students gave the analyses an average accuracy rating of 85%, and only then did Forer reveal that each had received an identical, generic report. Belief that a report is customized for us tends to improve our perception of the report's accuracy

Due to these legitimate criticisms of Myers-Briggs and its unscientific underpinnings, the test is rarely used in clinical psychology. This is a clue people. When you see a topic that purports to be psychological being used in practically every professional discipline except psychology, you have very good reason to be skeptical of its actual value.

The test does have some severe inherent problems. It's been found that 50% of test takers who retake it score differently the second time. This is because nobody is strictly an 'E' or an 'I', for example, but somewhere in between. Many people are right on the border for some of the four dichotomies, and depending on their mood that day or other factors, may answer enough questions differently to push them over. Yet the results inaccurately pigeonhole them all the way over to one side or the other. This makes it possible for two people who are very similar to actually end up with completely opposite scores.

From the perspective of statistical analysis, Myers-Briggs' fundamental premise is flawed. According to Myers & Briggs, each person is either an introvert or an extravert. Within each group we would expect to see a bell curve showing the distribution of extraversion within the extraverts group, and introversion within the introverts. If the Myers-Briggs approach is valid, we should expect to see two separate bell curves along the introversion/extraversion spectrum, making it valid for Myers & Briggs to decide there are two groups into which people fit. But data have shown that people do not clump into two separately identifiable curves; they clump into a single bell curve, with extreme introverts and extreme extraverts forming the long tails of the curve, and most people gathered somewhere in the middle. Jung himself said "There is no such thing as a pure extravert or a pure introvert. Such a man would be in the lunatic asylum." This does not support the Myers-Briggs assumption that people naturally separate into two groups. Myers-Briggs takes a knife and cuts the bell curve right down the center, through the meatiest part, and right through most people's horizontal error bars. Moreover, this forced error is compounded four times, with each of the four dichotomies. This statistical fumble helps to explain why so many people score differently when retaking the test: There is no truly correct score for most people, and no perfect fit for anyone.

And this has been borne out in observation. A number of studies have found that personality types said to be most appropriate for certain professions, notably nursing or teaching, turn out to be no more prevalent among that profession than among the general population.

About all that Myers-Briggs is good for is to give people a quick snapshot of what their strengths and weaknesses might be, and of those with whom they interact. On the other hand you could get the same information just by asking them. As a tool for making career decisions, relationship decisions, or psychiatric assessment, it is pretty much useless.