The Articulate CEO

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.