As noted previously, you can respond to your wilderness experience negatively or positively. Your choice will determine how you survive or thrive and how you will leave the island.
POSSIBLE NEGATIVE, DESTRUCTIVE RESPONSES:
Are you exhibiting any of the following behaviors or have you noticed them in your colleagues?
1. Negative attitude expressed in constant grumbling, murmuring, belly-aching, and complaining
2. Blaming your colleagues, administration, staff, or students (i.e., the “blame game”)
3. Shouting, harsh words, rudeness, insults, put-downs, or mean and nasty comments directed at colleagues, staff, or students
4. Shirking responsibilities by not attending meetings or appointments, disappearing for hours at a time, not being available to students and colleagues, and/or being late for class
5. Becoming hardened and bitter about what’s happening
These behaviors are self-destructive, plus they can make everybody around you miserable. You will drive people away. Further, it is total waste of an opportunity to improve yourself as a professional, as you tackle each challenge.
POSSIBLE POSITIVE, CONSTRUCTIVE RESPONSES:
Alternatively, do any of these behaviors ring a bell?
1. Positive attitude to see this experience as an opportunity to grow and mature, and, just maybe, become wiser and stronger
2. Perceive this experience as: “This is only a test. If this had been an actual emergency, it wouldn’t be taking so long!” It’s just another trial on your professional journey.
3. Persevere and move forward in spite of limitations, barriers, and set-backs
4. Release your creative juices to seek solutions with fewer resources, kinda like that classic scene from Apollo 13
5. Reassess your time management or take a time-management seminar so you can become more efficient at handling the increased number of tasks in less time
6. Be grateful you have a job where you still can do something you love, such as teach or write, or do research or clinical practice, or drive people nuts, or any combination of the preceding
This experience will test what you are really made of (“Yo, preposition boy! Stop ending sentences with you know what!” Sorry.). Your true character will reveal itself, perhaps to the surprise of you and the people with whom you work. Which self is that going to be? How will you exit this wilderness?
Let me know your reactions and any suggestions that can help others survive. We’re all in this academic metaphor together!
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
SYMPTOMS OF CUTS
How have the departmental cuts and changes affected you? How are you feeling the pinch? What’s changed in your daily modus operandi?
Do you feel like
• your comfort zone has been disrupted?
• you experience more disappointments and rejections than usual?
• there are delays in your timetable that throw off your “to-do” list?
• you are under more stress and pressure than before?
• there are challenges to your character with new temptations?
How are you responding to these hits and difficulties? You have a choice in your response: either “negative and destructive” OR “positive and constructive.”
How do you want to leave this island when the rescue team arrives? Better or worse for the experience than when you entered? Or like the end of Lost, totally confused!
Whether you have experienced this professional drought or these limitations previously or any of these metaphors is irrelevant; it’s how you respond to this one that matters. You can be a role model for your colleagues and set a positive example OR drag them down with you. It’s YOUR CHOICE! Consider your options in my next blog. You can weigh the negative responses against the positive ones and then decide your course.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
Here’s the final ingredient in your recipe for an effective elevator spiel:
3. FOLLOW-UP (How can you follow-up and maintain contact?): Most first-time encounters are superficial how-do-you-do events with no follow-up. You probably will see them again only in your dreams. Here we’re trying to build relationships. You need to go one step further to continue the initial contact. Make an effort to follow-up. At the end, don’t forget to
a. ask for a business card, e-mail address, or info on the session he or she is presenting so you can attend,
b. give an invitation to join your LinkedIn professional network, your session at the conference, a reception your institution is sponsoring, or to collaborate on something, and/or
c. schedule a follow-up meeting at the conference, preferably over a beverage or food.
Example 1: “I’ll be doing a session here tomorrow on that topic at 1:30. Here’s my card. May I have your card? I’ll contact you about joining my network on LinkedIn so we can stay in touch. I hope to see you at my session tomorrow.” (Note follow-ups with session invite, card, LinkedIn, and session reminder.)
Example 2: “I’m doing a workshop on a few of them on Thurs. at 10AM. Here’s my card. Do you have a card? Let me know if I can help your faculty. Here’s an invitation to my university’s reception tonight. See you there.” (Note card and invites to session, to help, and to reception.)
What do you think? Are the examples and focus of the spiel any different than what you’re already doing? Let me know your thoughts.
The next blog in this series will tie these examples together and address the delivery of the speech. There will also be a bonus example suggested. See you Mon. It’s time for a snack.
Have a blast this weekend! Also, don’t forget to set your watches and clocks to daylight savings time, if that applies; otherwise, you’ll be an hour late to my blog. Buhbye!
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
In academia as well as the trade marketplace, subject lines in e-mails and titles of newsletters, blogs, journal articles, books, and conference presentations are typically business-as-usual, gag-in-the-throat boring, albeit scholarly, pretentious, and possibly difficult to understand. Of course, there are occasional exceptions, and those outliers are welcome breaths of fresh words.
STOPABILITY
There are so many electronic and paper communications; so little time. How do you stand out from the rest of the pack in an already super-overcrowded field, such as hundreds of e-mails to scan or 10–30 other concurrent conference presentations in the same time slot as yours? Instead of gagging, we need to be grabbing or throttling our readers’ throats with a title that stops them in their tracks. Your criterion for an effective title should be STOPABILITY. Create a stop for the pause that entices your readers to read. E-mail-wise, you have about a nanosecond to stop them before they hit DELETE.
How do you create a sizzling title for any professional message or document that may still be boring? At least, your reader may start reading before deleting.
EIGHT STRATEGIES FOR SIZZLING TITLES
Here are 8 strategies to consider from the world of marketing and advertising with my academic spin. Your title should convey the following:
1. Tell me what you can do for me. How can your title convey that your content will help me be a better teacher, researcher, business leader, manager, conference presenter, faculty developer, writer, or mousetrap? As a student, does your title suggest how you are going to help me finish my dissertation, present a paper, or get a job?
2. Tell me something I don’t already know. Adopt the cynical mindset of some of your colleagues and make sure your title doesn’t connote you’re recycling same ole same ole. The title should suggest what unique, new, meaningful contribution you are providing?
3. Keep it simple, succinct, and precise. We’ve all heard of the KISS model (Keep It Simple Stupid). This is the KISSPCS version (pronounced “Kisspicks”) if you retain the Stupid part. Apply it to your title. Carefully choose every word so that it precisely captures your message. Be terse and clear with your language. Whack unnecessary words.
OOPS! I’ve blogged past my word limit. I’m so embarrassed and ashamed of myself. What was I thinking? Please forgive me. The list of strategies will be continued tomorrow. Can you guess the other ways you can make your titles sizzle? Maybe you use techniques I haven’t tried. Please let me know your ideas.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
