Karen Friedman Enterprises
Creating compelling communicators.
Executive Presence is a big buzzword these days. Most articles focus on gestures, eye contact, body language and voice projection. All are important but will not guarantee presence. My latest video offers tips you won’t find in most articles.
Whether interviewing for job, presenting to people across the globe or simply having a conversation, virtual communication often requires a whole new set of rules. This video will help you ace your next virtual appearance.
In Mitch Albom’s book The Five People You Meet In Heaven, he eloquently describes how chance encounters can shape our lives.
In 1981, I had one of those chance encounters with a woman named Lilian Kleiman. She was the assistant news director at WITI TV in Milwaukee where I had just landed a job as a reporter and anchor.
I was terrified. I had just moved to Wisconsin from a former position as a reporter/anchor in Huntsville, Alabama. I knew no one.
Lil immediately eased the loneliness. She invited me to her home for holidays and included me in all of her large and lively family gatherings. During the four years I spent far away from home in an age before cell phones and text messaging, she made me feel a part of her family.
Long after Milwaukee, we stayed in touch—keeping tabs on each other’s lives from my marriage and the birth of my children to her continued accomplishments and the unfortunate premature death of her beloved son Danny. We met in Chicago and more recently in Philadelphia. We spoke every year on certain holidays. I adored Lil. She was a surrogate mother to a younger me when my mother was thousands of miles away.
As time passed, we talked less frequently, but I never felt out of touch until last month when I learned of her passing on Facebook. Imagine my shock when I read this post from a former colleague I hadn’t spoken to in 35 years.
“Lil Kleiman passed away on Thursday evening. She was a rare and bright soul. A lovely star. It is not lost on me that she would die on a night when the sky sparked with meteor showers. A mom to us, though not much older than us, she found a way to make each one of us so much better. And then she let us stand in the spotlight and accept the award. “
That is the kind of person Lil was and at work, she managed people the same way. When she nailed the exclusive story due to her great sources, she never gloated. Instead, she stepped away and gave the credit to others around her. When stories won Emmy’s due to her tenacity and talent, she never bragged. She turned the spotlight over to others.
At a young age of 79 by today’s standards, Lil died from a rare blood cancer. She had suffered for some time, but told her doctors that they should spend their time not with her, but with people they could help. She said she had a good life; no regrets. That’s the Lil I remember. She always put others first.
Her death prompted me to reach out and reconnect with colleagues I haven’t spoken to in decades. We laughed and reminisced about fun times that seemed like yesterday. We talked about the impact and influence Lil had on all of our lives.
Someone I lost touch with emailed letting me know that at the funeral, her son noted the role I played in her life, and how she played a role in mine. Those words touched me in a way I could not have imagined.
Imagine how you might have made an impact on someone’s life, but never really knew. Imagine how a child of 9 or 10, now a man, recalls what you meant to his mother. Imagine discovering someone you admired and looked up to also admired and looked up to you. Imagine realizing how this person unknowingly shaped who you are today.
Author Mitch Albom writes “Heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners.” Lil Kleiman could be found in everyone’s corner. A little slice of heaven on even the darkest days.
Her passing is sad and unfortunate, but the lessons she shared will live on. A chance encounter can become permanent when we least expect it. We may not recognize the impact this person will have in our lives, but when we look back, we will realize that we are better people for having known them.
At the end of the Facebook post telling people of Lil’s death, my friend wrote “And now, the sky is less bright because we lost her.”
Fortunately, the radiance of so many lives Lil Kleiman shaped and touched will forever shine brightly.
My son and I walked into the bowling alley off a beaten path in Bridgeton, New Jersey. It looked nice enough. It was clean and appeared modern with a lively banner stretched across all the lanes. The alley shoes appeared almost new and the bowling balls were in good condition. From a distance, the lanes looked shiny and appeared well oiled. For bowling snobs like us who bowl in weekly leagues and have our own gear, this is important.
That’s why as soon as I stepped onto the lanes, I knew something was wrong. Instead of being able to slide up to the foul line on modern non-skid synthetic boards, the shiny wood alley was more like an old fashioned kitchen floor that had been saturated with wax to give it a nice appearance. Sliding up to the foul line which is the norm before releasing the ball, could have been dangerous. If your foot sticks, you can take a nasty fall.
So, I walked up to the foul line and like a child first learning how to bowl, I aimed for the center pin and rolled the ball down the alley. Clip clop. Clip Clop. Like the hoofs of a horse, it noisily bounced and thumped over the wood until it veered off to the left and sought refuge in the gutter.
It’s easy to blame the bowler, but in this case the fault was the shiny wood which was warped. At closer glance, the boards were splitting apart. While the alleys looked up-to-date, they were actually a throwback to the late 1930’s when lanes were coated with shellac and bowling balls were made of rubber. Back then, there was little concern for the relationship between the lane surface and the ball.
Over time, like most products, lanes evolved and were made with urethane-based finishes and today’s balls are far more sophisticated. At this little New Jersey alley, the bowling balls were contemporary but present-day balls do not interact well on out of date lanes.
There is a similarity between that bowling alley and companies who update their products but not their messages. Trying to communicate the same messages without attention to how those messages fit into today’s lifestyle is no different. Yet, that’s what we repeatedly observe when conducting message development and communication programs.
Just last week, we facilitated a communications training for a healthcare company that makes homeopathic products. Their old messages are still accurate, succinct and tell an engaging story, but that story is outdated. They’ve updated product packages, labeling and have embraced today’s social media platforms. But when they speak, they use the same examples they’ve been using for twenty years even though today’s audience is far different than the audience of two decades ago.
Today’s audience embraces active lifestyles, healthy food choices and natural treatments for everyday ailments. Helping today’s listener understand how natural products can complement conventional treatments and fit their day-to-day regimens should be as natural as the products themselves. Sometimes, that’s as simple as sharing every day examples and anecdotes to make the message more relevant.
Like bowling alley management that updated appearances to lure people in, the focus must include how to make those people stay. Companies who fail to stay current by not clearly communicating relevant messages can also find themselves striking out.
Yet day after day, people focus on what they care about instead of concentrating on what the listener cares about. They insist on peppering slides with endless text because it’s important to them. They speed up to get it all in when they’re running out of time. They use lots of industry acronyms that mean nothing to the listener. Because they are often so focused on their own agenda, they miss obvious cues that signal their listeners have tuned out.
Perhaps there is a big lesson to be learned from a little alley. Other than my son and me, no one else was at the alley compared to our home lanes which are packed at all hours. Those lanes are constantly updated with the latest technology and so they can adapt to their customer’s needs.
If you want your message to land in the strike zone, make sure that message is customer centric and relevant so it doesn’t land in the gutter.
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