Holiday weekends are a milestone and, for those of us who love summer, Memorial Day weekend beckons from Labor Day onward.

To prepare for it, I’m guessing many of you will be rushing about checking on things that have lain dormant since last summer. Some of you may also have these days circled on your calendar as times to do things around your house such as clean furnace filters, water filters, pool filters….

Today, however, I’m thinking about cleaning mental filters.

Because as we head into our holiday weekends, filled with anticipation, people in Oklahoma—not to mention Boston and Texas—are struggling to come to terms with unbearable loss, pain, suffering.

They are not going to have the summers they had hoped and planned for.

Closer to home, it’s more than likely you know people who are coming to terms with the loss of a loved one, an unexpected diagnosis, a heartbreaking car accident….They, too, will not be having the summers they hoped and planned for.

So as you dig out your linen pants and your summer dresses (as I’ve also been doing) take a moment to clean your mental filters, so that when you do bump into the traffic jam, the unexpected airline delay, the lousy meal at the over-hyped restaurant, the family member spoiling for a fight over the backyard grill, you are able to keep a sense of proportion.

Because the majority of us are blessed beyond our wildest dreams—I know I am—and if our gratitude can ripple outward, it may help to make this holiday weekend truly joyful for others.

Wishing you all the happiest of happy summers,

Frances Cole Jones

About once a week I take a “luxury coach” (that’s a bus to you and me) back and forth to Manhattan. One of the reasons I take the bus rather than the train is that it offers Wi-Fi….or it claims to. From time to time, however, I get on and no Wi-Fi.

As you can imagine, this can be challenging. It is not, however, insurmountable.

What can send me around the bend is the attitude of the attendant toward my request that an attempt be made to get the Wi-Fi up and running. Sometimes the attendant is lovely. Sometimes, as below, there is an epic fail.

Based on my experience of last week, here are 3 tools you can use to avoid having customer’s heads explode when things don’t go as planned:

Let the Customer Know Steps are Being Taken to Resolve the Issue: In this situation, unless passengers are told an attempt has been made to reboot the Wi-Fi there is no way to know the request has not gone in one ear and out the other. In the moment, I was not told. Keeping customers informed goes a long way toward them keeping their cool.

(At Least Pretend to) Care:  With zero information (and an hour and a half into the ride) I pointed out to this young woman that there was still no Wi-Fi. Her response? “Well, I tried.” My raised eyebrows received a sigh and an eye roll, not to mention the following remark. “OK, well, I’ll try again when I’m done taking fares.” Hey, young lady, how about, “I’m so sorry it’s still not working. Let me try again before I take your money.” ? Saying sorry—and sounding sorry—goes a long way toward getting customers on your side.

Articulate What the Follow Up Will Be: As of the end of the trip, there was still no Wi-Fi and, to the best of my knowledge, that bus will have non-working Wi-Fi next week, next month and next year…. Coming back to tell me there was a plan for following through to correct the issue would have gone a long way toward my being willing to make a reservation on that bus again. Instead, I called the competitor. Having a system in place for following through is critical for building customer loyalty.

Frances Cole Jones

We’ve all heard the phrase, “count your blessings,” and heaven knows it’s a smart thing to do. Today, however, I’m writing about counting your assets– and I’m not talking about your stock holdings, your super-charged SUV, or your ocean front property. I’m talking about the assets you have that you may not recognize as valuable, and so forget to take pride in and display.

Why am I talking about this now? Because as we head into summer’s social season I often discover people are uncomfortable due to a perception that they are somehow less than their host or their fellow guests because they don’t have a grazillion dollars in the bank, or a degree from an Ivy League school, or a children’s birthday party complete with pony rides and petting zoo. This perception hinders them from presenting their most relaxed, confident, enthusiastic selves. Those are the qualities, however, that actually make a terrific guest.

What are intangible assets? Here, a few examples from my team:

My friend John has an extraordinary ability to recognize—and harder still—articulate why something is beautiful. This asset makes him a delight to have around because his appreciation is so genuine and his compliments so on-target. My friend Sarah is a master storyteller. Her ability to capture a group’s attention and then get everyone involved in the story inevitably breaks the ice between other guests. By the time she’s finished, it’s hard to get a word in edgewise. And my friend Greg is a genius on the dance floor, so skillful that he can make any partner look coordinated and at ease.

So the next time you find yourself dreading a social situation because you think you don’t measure, take a moment to consider some of the intangible assets you will surely be bringing to the party. In addition to any or all of the above you might, for example, have an ability to draw others out one-on-one, or a boundless supply of arcane topics with which to dazzle the guest no one else can chat with, or a gift for finding common ground between guests who’ve just perpetuated an awkwardness (Another important thing to realize? Other people are likely feeling uncomfortable, too…)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, “Give what you have. To someone it may be better than you dare to think.”Defining your intangible, yet invaluable, assets will help you remember what a wonderful asset you are.

Frances Cole Jones

Last Friday I returned home from my month-long work travels, and longing to reconnect with my fur-covered chum, only to be desperately disappointed when he brushed past me and spent the afternoon lying in the yard.

Of course, I blamed myself, and my schedule. What other reason could there be?

Then my phone rang and my beloved friend, Geoffrey, who had been acting as his guardian angel in my absence, said, “So, I have something to tell you….”

It seems earlier that day Seymour had managed to tip over the garbage, rip off the lid, and eat an entire roasted chicken carcass—every last scrap and bone.

Oh, so that’s why he was lying in the yard like a cobra that swallowed a cow.

Why do I tell you this?

I tell you this because it’s important to remember that you may not necessarily have triggered for your boss’s/colleague’s/friend’s preoccupation/abstraction/mental indigestion.

It’s possible they are just digesting something that occurred earlier that day.

So before you begin berating yourself, take a moment, do some additional observation, ask a few (non-invasive, open-ended) questions (“How’s it going?”, “Is there anything you need from me?, etc.)

Because sometimes it’s not about you.

Frances Cole Jones

I discovered recently that one of my pet peeves is shared by many (I love it when that happens) What is it? Speaking with people who are on a speaker phone.

“But” you might protest, “everybody does it.”

I recognize that; however, that doesn’t make it any less irritating.

Why, exactly, does it bug me?

It bugs me for a number of reasons:

It’s hard to hear the person who is speaking.

I end up having to yell to ensure they can hear me.

And (and it’s possible this is just my paranoia but, as Henry Kissinger said, “Paranoid is well informed.”) I’m never quite sure when I’m speaking to someone who is on the speaker phone who else might be listening to my call.

In short, it doesn’t sound professional.

“OK,” you may say, ” but what can I do about it?”

I’m so glad you asked.

If you haven’t yet met, let me introduce you to the Moshi Moshi.

For just $30 you can both sound like you are speaking to someone from a secure land line AND look quite cool.

I bought two years ago and I can’t tell you how often it has helped me to sound professional as I ran a conference call from some preposterous location.

So my recommendation is invest, enjoy, give me a call and let me know what you think.

Originally Published April 5, 2013 on http://bigdesignevents.com

Frances Cole Jones is founder of Cole Media Management and author of How to Wow: Proven Strategies for Selling Your (Brilliant) Self in any Situation. Her company’s focus is to cultivate clients’ inherent strengths to develop more powerful communication skills. She is the creator of the “Interview Wow” app for the iPhone and iPad and her blog was voted one of the top 100 websites for women by Forbes.com.

Hey Frances!  Thanks for agreeing to do this interview. I just finished reading How to Wow and loved the book!  You gave some great advice ranging from making lasting impressions to perfecting PowerPoint presentations.  Tell me, what are you working on for the future? What’s next?

I’m working on an e-book titled “Wow Your Way into the Job of Your Dreams.” It’s not about figuring out what your dream job is; instead, once you’ve targeted your dream job, it tells you how to get it.

In your experience, what are some of the common mistakes professionals make before and during a presentation or public appearance?

In my experience, people tend to either under prepare, or spend too much time preparing the visual aspect of their presentation and not enough time fine-tuning their message, and the delivery of that message.

Underpreparing sounds a lot like the executive who says, “I work better off the cuff,” or “I do better when I wing it,” etc.

FYI: nobody does better when they wing it.

While visuals can be effective, they should not take the place of a carefully honed message. In addition to knowing why you care about your subject matter, you need to know why your audience should care about your subject matter—what’s in it for them? How is your information going to improve their life? If you can’t answer that question you aren’t prepared—I don’t care how great your visuals are.

Once you’ve answered that question, and created visuals that support your message, you need to practice out loud. There is no way around that. You can think you know exactly what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it but until you hear it coming out of your mouth, you aren’t going to notice that you are missing a transition or that there is a gigantic hole in your logic.

I think most people understand that having great communication skills are important to success in any field.  What are some recommendations you might have to increase these skills for professional and personal relationships?

I recommend thinking about the UCLA percentages of influence regarding how we weight the 3 aspects of communication: verbal, vocal, and visual. What Professor Albert Mehrabian discovered is that people only remember 7% of what we say to them; 38% of our impact comes from our tonal quality; and 55% from what our body is doing while we are speaking.

This means you need to think about telling stories when you speak, as they keep you away from useless modifiers like, “Great,” “Amazing,” “Awesome” etc. which convey nothing. It means that when you say something as seemingly simple as “I’m happy to meet you,” you actually need to sound happy.

And it means that you need to consider what your body is doing while you are speaking. Are you arms crossed in front of you? Are you leaning back in your chair in a ‘too cool for school’ kind of way? Are your hands where people can see them? We trust you when we can see your hands and we don’t trust you when we can’t, etc.

Sharing presentations on websites such as slideshare.net have become an important and expected practice after speaking at conferences.  Any advice or tips on how to create a presentation that will be shared?

I notice a lot of people don’t want to give up, or give away, what they view as “proprietary information” (Otherwise known as “my ideas.”) so they create presentations that dance around information, but aren’t ultimately useful.

For example, someone will do a presentation on team building and say something like, “Teams are really important. Without teams companies cannot thrive. In order to be effective teams must be strong. And strong teams need strong leaders.”

This kind of thing d.r.i.v.e.s  m.e. c.r.a.z.y. Tell me HOW build a strong team—don’t just talk around the issue.

In my view, ideas are limitless. If you’ve had a few good ones, give them away! Offer your audience a ton of practical application information. Let them take all your good ideas—you’ll have more! (And if you don’t, that shouldn’t be your audience’s problem.) Presentations with a ton of takeaways are the ones that are shared.

In the field of User Experience (UX) design, designers are working to create experiences that include touch, sounds, and even smells.  Digital interfaces such as websites, smart phones and tablets are also being used for audience participation.  In what ways, do you see these elements becoming an expected part of presentations in the future?  

I think people will always be turned on by technology, but that—at the end of the day—if you don’t have a good story to tell your technology isn’t going to save your presentation: the audience will remember that the effects were cool, but they won’t retain your message. To me, the best UX design enhances a speaker’s story, it doesn’t replace it.

The ‘Second Screen’ Experience is where people will watch an event then chat about it using a second device like a phone or tablet. This has been happening at conferences for years and now is happening in living rooms. How are you preparing your clients to take advantage of positive feedback or deal effectively with negative comments that are being spread live to hundreds or even millions of people via social media channels?

I think the most effective way to take advantage of positive feedback, and stay on top of negative comments, is to stop your presentation every 5-7 minutes for questions. Allowing your audience to participate ensures they stay involved, no matter how they feel about what you are saying. If they are feeling positive—and you let them contribute—they become still more invested in your success, as it’s now their success. If they are feeling negative, allowing them to air their concern/grievance/complaint will enable them to keep listening until the end, rather than simply saying to themselves, “This person is wrong so I’m going to pull out my phone and start doing a little light texting.”

With regard to handling hostile questions, a good technique to know is: if it’s big, make it small; if it’s small, make it big. So, if you are speaking about a particular kind of technology and someone says, “This is ridiculous! How can you believe people will buy into that?” you say, “You sound like you’ve had some experience with users being resistant to technology. Can you tell me exactly what occurred in your situation?” Alternatively, if they say, “When I introduced X into my office, no one was willing to risk using the interface so how can you think yours will be different?” Then you say, “Has anyone else in the audience had trouble getting their colleagues to adapt to new technology?”

As a nation, we grieve for Boston.

And, as always, the reverberations of any act of violence leave us more-than-ever aware of our own mortality— of the laughability of our sense of control.

Under these circumstances, it’s hard to function.

But like so many people, I have been comforted this week by the below quote from Mr. Rogers—one which has pervaded news outlets and social media:

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of “disaster,” I remember my mother’s words and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers – so many caring people in this world.”

This was certainly true in Boston. In addition to the horror of what occurred, it was impossible not to feel hope as I saw people running toward the explosions.

What I’m thinking about today, however, is how often we brush off everyday acts of heroism in our lives: the person who offers to haul our garbage to the dump, or drive us to the doctor in a rainstorm, or stay up with us while we are waiting for bad news.

But I believe celebrating these everyday acts of heroism will both help us heal, and make us stronger—will help build the ‘heroism muscles’ needed should any of us ever, god forbid, find ourselves in a situation akin to what occurred in Boston.

So I invite you to celebrate the small acts of heroism you encounter daily.

Because there is no such thing as an ‘Everyday Hero’. Rather, heroes walk among us daily.

Frances Cole Jones

This past week I sat in on a meeting that – initially—seemed like it was going to be a cakewalk. There were no situations to discuss, no dilemmas to consider. Everyone seemed to be very collegial. All was likely to be easy.

Imagine the collective surprise of the group, then, when one member—within 10 minutes of sitting down—suddenly sprang out of his chair and announced, “That’s it. I’m leaving!” After which he snatched up papers and computer and stormed out, leaving those of us who remained in varying states of shock, surprise, upset.

As you can imagine, the speculation began immediately. “What happened?” “What did I say?” “Was it because of X? Y? Z?”

Only one person sat without speaking. Once we’d exhausted our collective yickety yak we turned to him, “Do you know what just happened??”

“Well,” he said, “I know what I saw. Mr. X got up and left the room. I think we should move on.”

Wow.

Despite the fact that my internal Nancy Drew was longing to peruse the inner machinations of Mr. X’s temper tantrum I was blown away by Mr. Calm Cool and Collected’s ability to stay away from speculating/hypothesizing. While this is something I am intensely aware of when I prepare clients to answer questions during ‘crisis’ situations it is something I forgot completely when the situation went from humdrum to haywire in 60 seconds flat.

It’s something I long to be cool enough to do in the future.

On the off chance you might also be impressed—and like to emulate it, too—I share it with you.

Frances Cole Jones

Recently, I was asked to comment on how presenters can create presentations that are sure to be shared.

While some people might say, “Be sure to be funny,” or “Have fantastic graphics,” or “Constantly allude to your intellectual superiority” (OK, nobody says that, but many speakers do it) my feeling is, give your audience practical, tangible takeaways.

Unfortunately, however, too many people don’t want to give up, or give away, what they view as “proprietary information” (Or, what the slightly less litigiously-minded refer to as “my ideas.”) so they create presentations that dance around information, but aren’t ultimately useful.

For example, someone will give a presentation on team building that sounds something like, “Creating teams is important. Without teams companies cannot thrive. In order to be effective, teams must be strong. And strong teams need strong leaders. So when you have a strong leader, you will have a strong team.”

(All the while including visuals of strong men squinting into the sun.)

Now I don’t know about you, but this kind of thing d.r.i.v.e.s  m.e. c.r.a.z.y. If you’re giving a presentation on team building, then tell me HOW build a strong team. Don’t talk around the issue.  Tell me exactly what I need to do today to make my team stronger tomorrow.

(For example, you could borrow an idea from the U.S. Military and give your project or initiative a name that reminds everyone that their work informs and furthers both their goals and dreams and the goals and dreams of the company as a whole. After all, there’s a reason they give things names like “Operation Rolling Thunder” not “Operation Let’s Cross Our Fingers.”)

In my view, ideas belong to everybody. (As you likely noticed, I just borrowed one from the military and offered it to you.) If you’ve had a few good ones, don’t hoard them– give them away! You’ll have more! (And if you don’t, that shouldn’t be your audience’s problem.) Presentations with a ton of takeaways are the ones that are shared; and presenters who treat their audience as intellectual equals are the ones that are loved.

Frances Cole Jones

In addition to collecting redundancies (and if you missed that entry, you can check it out here: “Redundancy Alert: or Why Adele’s Song “Someone Like You Drives Me Mad” ) I’m also a collector of malapropisms, the Wikipedia definition of which is, “A malapropism is the production of an incorrect word in place of a word with a similar sound, resulting in a nonsensical, often humorous utterance.”

Below, a few to cheer you as we say goodbye to a bitter March—and welcome April with open arms.

My first two come to you via the Housewives-of-Whatever-Town-You-Enjoy-“Hate Watching” (as my friend Eric refers to a show that sucks your soul away—and yet there you are again…in front of the set…) Thankfully, these lovely ladies can always be counted on to provide entertainment for a malaprop-loving-soul.

Run the gambit: substituted for “Run the gamut” it seemed particularly apt in the housewifely context—where gambits, i.e. maneuvers, stratagem, and ploys run the gamut.

Knock it up to experience: substituted for “Chalk it up to experience” it, again, seemed beautifully apt in the context of housewife-fun, where getting knocked up is likely to be chalked up as just one more experience.

Up and atom: My father often woke us with the phrase “Up and at’em”; this variance arrived in my inbox on a particularly busy morning. Given that I was feeling a bit like the atom bomb had dropped, it cheered me up enormously.

Throws of parenting:  Ah, throws vs. throes….I noted this as a portion of one overworked parent’s Facebook status and consoled myself by thinking that perhaps she was merely channeling the hope of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and so, this was a mere Freudian slip.

In sink:  One would hope that—at the very least– the boy-band ‘N Sync would have spared me from being reassured by a client that we were ‘in sink’. Alas, it was not to be.

Potato Leak Soup: Despite being touted as the special of the day at my one of my favorite local restaurants, I could not bring my self to order it…..

Should ‘April Showers’ hold our spring rejoicing at bay, I hope you will send along some of your favorite malapropisms to cheer my soul.

Frances Cole Jones