All posts by Amy Ellis

Head of Integrations for MailChimp. Dog-rescuer, crossword-puzzle-doer, coffee drinker.
04-Managing a project team, feedback

A Few Lessons on Managing Teams From Dale Carnegie

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I’ve recently been listening to Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. This classic book, published originally in 1936, tops many top 10 lists of most influential business books ever published. Since it is so frequently included in such lists, I figured there might be a few things to learn from Carnegie’s words.

The first section of the books covers a few basic concepts of handling people. As a manager I am always interested in ways that I can more effectively motivate my team and give them feedback. Carnegie mentions three fundamentals of handling people.

Fundamental Techniques in Handling People
1. Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain
2. Give honest and sincere appreciation
3. Arouse in the other person an eager want

The basics of these idea are that it is easy to criticize, condemn and complain but doing so won’t gain you the respect of your team mates or direct reports and certainly doesn’t help you motivate them to continue to improve. Instead, Carnegie suggests approaching team mates with an open mind and a genuine level of respect for their decision making process.

Additionally, Carnegie suggests making a concerted effort to personally acknowledge the ways that your team mates contribute positively to the team and the company as a whole.  When your direct reports feel that you respect them and that you see and acknowledge the ways they are positively contributing, it is much easier to offer suggestions for continued growth and improvement.

Personally I’ve found this advice to be very helpful as I work with my team. I noticed that I wasn’t always making sure to stop and acknowledge my team for their successes, both big and small. I now make a point to voice my appreciation for what they’re doing in person. I also make sure that I share successes our team has accomplished with the rest of the company as well as sharing individual team member’s successes. I’ve found that while my team does gain fulfillment from our group successes, it goes a long way for me to acknowledge their individual contributions as well.

07d-Delivering a presentation, clearing slides, questions

Pre-Speech Rituals from Speaker Camp ATL

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I was asked to serve as a mentor at a workshop this weekend called Speaker Camp ATL. The workshop is designed to prepare attendees for conference submission season. Attendees came prepared with presentation ideas and with the help of mentors they worked through the bios and abstracts they’ll use when they apply at various conferences in the fall. Then, at the end of the workshop, they presented for 5 minutes in front of a video camera (sound familiar anyone?). Following each speech the mentors offered encouragement and feedback to help them continue getting ready for a conference speaking position. For me, helping other people is a really great way for me to learn things myself, so I was super excited to participate.

There was a ton of great information during the workshop including things like setting realistic expectations on prep time for presentations (they suggested that a 45 minute presentation requires around 40 hours of prep and practice), and paying attention to details like arriving early to ‘case the joint’ so you feel comfortable in the space where you’ll speak etc.  The ideas behind the workshop come from a soon-to-be-published book of the same name.

My favorite discussion from the workshop actually centered around pre-speech rituals. I loved hearing what other experienced speakers do to get ready for a keynote presentation. I’d always thought that my pre-speech rituals were signs of inexperience and I was happy to hear that in fact these rituals frequently become more developed and specific as speakers gain more experience.

One ritual that several people shared was something they call “Power Posing.” Power posing essentially involves spending several minutes in a body posture that conveys power, such as standing up straight, feet hip-width apart with shoulders back and hands on your hips. The speakers in today’s workshop assert that they always do this for 2-5 minutes before they go on stage and that the results are transformative for them. They feel calm, confident and ready to share their knowledge and information with the audience. And much to my surprise, there’s some good research that backs this up. Specifically the CNN article above includes the quote,

“[power posers]… experienced significant increases in testosterone — a hormone linked to assertiveness — and significant decreases in cortisol — a hormone linked to stress. In other words — two minutes of preparatory power posing optimizes the brain to function well in high-stakes challenges.”

I’m so interested to try this out. Have you guys every heard of this or done this? Does it work for you? What other pre-speech rituals are helpful for you guys?

My ritual involves writing down my worst fears about what might happen during my presentation until I can’t think of anything else bad that might happen and then tearing up the paper and throwing it away. It seems to help clear all those irrational fears out of my head so I can focus on the speech itself.