Today I was participated in Interview-pa-looza, a mock interview event for students of Ramapo College, which the organizers describe as "the speed dating of interview prep."

I'm a huge fan of the format of this event because it emphasizes practice and coaching. Instead of sitting in a room hearing about interview techniques for an hour, the students are practicing with volunteers and receiving feedback.

How it works:
• Three 12-minute rounds of 12 students rotating through 3 interviewers
• Interviewers grouped by question type - behavioral, situational, and resume-related
• Within the 12-minute session, the interviewer asks a question /questions, the student
responds, the interviewer provides immediate feedback/coaching
• A wrap-up after each round, allowing interviewers to share general observations

A few quick hit interview tips from the wrap-up round (I'm paraphrasing). 

Malik Abdur-Razzaq, MPH, Director Marketing and Enrollment, Partners Health Plan

• Research the company and come with questions about the company and the role. When the inevitable question, "Do you have any questions for me?" comes from the interviewer, the answer is "Yes."

Francisco Montes, PHR, Associate Director, Talent Development, Liberty Science Center

• Video interviews are becoming more common so you should prepare for them ahead of time. Find a quiet, well-lit, and clean space so you can make a good impression. Also, eye-contact in this context means looking at the camera, not their eyes on the screen.

Joe Kwon, Owner, JoeKwonJoe Coaching

• Don't think of a question as a container that you have to fill with your answer. It's a means to learn more about you. So consider how you can connect with the interviewer and put yourself in the best light. In most cases, it's not about answering the question right.

This well-run and popular event is organized by LaQuan Norman and Cynthia Gutiérrez Michalewski. They always welcome volunteers so please reach out to them if you are interested in participating and would like to pay it forward in honor of those who helped you early in your career. I highly recommend it!

LaQuan Norman, Associate Director, The Career Center at the Anisfield School of Business, Ramapo College of New Jersey - lnorman@ramapo.edu

Cynthia Gutiérrez Michalewski, Assistant Director/Career Advisor, Anisfield School of Business , Ramapo College of New Jersey - cmichale@ramapo.edu

You know when you go into a situation expecting to get one thing, but instead you get something totally unexpected and much better?

Several years ago I attended a training on Public Speaking. The instructor, I'll call him Tom, was amazing and he subsequently went to work for the NBA to coach executives. By the end of the training, I had learned so much, but practically speaking my public speaking had not significantly improved in 1 day.

However, Tom imparted one truly valuable gift to me - he opened my eyes to the realization that there are many hidden principles that create a great presentation. To the uninitiated (like myself), you can feel these principles working, but you don't know what they are or why. For example, we did an exercise where we practiced eye contact and how to engage different-sized audiences by paying attention to eye contact. Have you ever been in an audience and had a strong feeling, for just a few moments, that the speaker was talking directly to you? How did that make you feel? And how did it affect your experience of the presentation?

Ever since that presentation, I took a new approach to observing public speakers. If you are looking at something through a new lens, it's amazing what you can perceive. So many of the things that matter are not the obvious ones. For example, having beautiful slides and transitions does NOT make you a great speaker. Let me repeat that more succinctly. Slides don't matter. YOU matter.

It was in this spirit that I was excited to speak to David McGimpsey, a friend who makes a living training people to improve their public speaking game. Below are a few of the gems I picked up from David during our conversation and in reflection afterwards.

Preparation

People seriously underestimate the need to prepare for a presentation.

• Even if you know the content cold, you still need to prepare for the audience type, the room setup, the length of time, etc.
• The ease with which the presentation is seemingly delivered is inversely proportional to the amount of preparation.
• The key to a great delivery is knowing very deeply what you are talking about.

Open loops

One way to draw people into your presentation and create engagement is to use an open loop.

• An open loop is a question or thought that is not completed. In addition to speakers, others such as authors, comedians, and sales copy writers use this to great effect.
• Some common examples: "I have a confession to make," or "The little known secret that will deliver X."
• Can you name the movie these first lines come from? Bonus points if you can without using a search engine.

"Somebody's pulling me close to the ground... I can sense, but I can't see. I ain't panicked. I've been here before. Same as I got popped on 104th street. Don't take me to no hospital, please."

Evolution not a Revolution

In regards to very funny or memorable speakers, this brilliance is often built bit by bit.

• Sometimes in a previous presentation and perhaps quite by accident, something you do or say will get a positive reaction.
• Great speakers are sensitive to this feedback, remember this and build on it for the next time.
• It reminds me of a high-level athlete. We picture them on a field or court in all their winning glory and don't dwell on the hours toiling in relative obscurity.

Thanks David for your insights, your reminders, and your inspiration to help me and others improve our presentation skills.

If you'd like to hear the entire conversation with David, you can find the podcast on iTunes here or in the "Podcast" area of my blog EZPZ.

Next post next Saturday, 6:30 a.m.

Why isn't this working? This should totally be working! This always gets a great reaction, but now I'm getting nada. What in the @#$%&...

Has this ever happened to you?

You are doing exactly the same thing that was wildly successful before, but now you are bombing. Maybe you are no longer the apple of your boss' eye. Maybe a cherished activity with your kid has gone from epic to "so last year." Maybe a gesture that was once appreciated by a close friend is now met with disdain. What is happening?

Or perhaps more importantly, why is this happening?

Obvious culprits are that people get used to things or that people and times change. Both are worthy of consideration. However, today I'd like to focus on two less obvious suspects.

suspect #1. a technique has limited usefulness

Imagine a Saturday morning class filled with barely awake kids being asked to pay attention and practice for 45 minutes. Now add floors covered with soft foam mats onto which the kids regularly sit and fall down.

See any challenges?

Welcome to my Saturday mornings at the Aikido dojo helping Eran Vardi sensei with the Children's class. Imagine trying to get a kid to cooperate, except without any of the authority of being their parent or teacher. You're not even the substitute teacher, just a helper.

I recently listened to the book, "How to Talk So Little Kids Will Listen," by Joanna Faber and Julie King [include link]. When I got to the section on "Tools for Engaging Cooperation" I was all ears. One of the tools they share for getting kids to cooperate is to BE PLAYFUL. So if a direct instruction or request is not working, make it fun. For example, instead of "put all your toys back in the chest now," try "that toy chest sure seems hungry - let's feed it these yummy toys!"

"Come on Joe, that sounds tiring! Kids should just listen to adults and I have neither the time nor inclination to come up with a game to get them to listen."

I hear you, I do. This is one of many tools you can choose and not meant to be a way of life. So deploy as appropriate. When what should work is not working, it can be worth trying something different. And when I feel my ego getting in the way, I try to remember to ask myself,

Do you want to be right or do you want to be effective? 

Let's jump out of the book and back into the dojo. It's like a lounging epidemic. My requests / orders / powers of persuasion are all falling flat, so I decide to try to BE PLAYFUL. Instead of "Come on, get up, you need to practice," I say, "Whoa, watch out! The floor is hot, you'll get burned! Get up off the lava!" And like magic kids are popping up like a jack-in-the-boxes. 

Fast-forward a few weeks later and it's the same problem. Except this time my hot lava technique meets an untimely demise. 

Me: Whoa, get up, you'll get burned! The floor is hot!

5 year old: No. It's not. (Reclining on the mat, like a seal basking on the beach). 

Foiled by a five-year old! What just happened?

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns. 

Bruce Lee

I made a rookie mistake. I relied on my hot lava technique because it found early success, not understanding the limits of its usefulness.

Here's the key - A technique only works when the current conditions allow it to tap into the underlying principle (or truth) that makes is work. 

Technique: BE PLAYFUL by turning the mat into hot lava and getting the kids to stand up quickly.

Underlying Principle: When an activity is fun for a person, they are more likely to cooperate. 

I'll be honest, I was stuck by the incontrovertible "it's not hot" rebuttal. If I could rewind time, I would have tried one of two things.

Option A: Realize that my hot lava technique was not fun in this moment and switched to something that would be more fun.

Option B: If I felt fun was not going to happen, switch to an entirely different tool that operates under a different principle.

suspect #2. An egotistical perspective on the effectiveness of a technique

Is it just me or does it seem like the prevalence of corporate PR disasters has been accelerating? And of course, with the screw up comes the obligatory apology.

This got me thinking, what makes for a good apology? Whether it is to an individual, to customers, employees or society, why are some apologies more effective than others?

Scott Galloway is the Founder of L2 and a Clinical Professor at the NYU Stern School of Business. In his LinkedIn article on crisis management, "No Mercy / No Malice: Re-Accommodated" he shares an effective Crisis Management algorithm.

It goes something like this:

• I @#$%'d up
• I'm sorry
• I'll work to prevent it from happening again

And generally speaking, this engenders the following Forgiveness algorithm.

• Yes, you @#$%'d up
• I forgive you

I can see this technique working so well so much of the time. But there is a trap we need to avoid when a technique works too well for us. The few times it doesn't work, you might start to blame the victim for not responding properly to your flawlessly executed technique (e.g., the Crisis Management algorithm). I mean after all, you did what you were supposed to do and that usually works, so now it's the other person's fault and problem.

We do this all the time. Have you been on the sending or receiving end of the following?

"Well, I apologized, okay? What else do you expect me to do? If you are going to continue to be upset or hold this against me, there's nothing I can do about that."

It's not what I do, it's what he feels.

Christian Tissier sensei

Something like this happens all the time in my own Aikido training. You execute a certain technique that you "think" you have mastered and so you expect a certain response of your partner. But for various reasons, chief among them you are not as good as you think you are, your partner doesn't respond the way you expect them to. Or worse, they don't respond at all! At this point, we've come to an important crossroads. You can do one of two things.

Option A: Get upset at the other person for not knowing how they "should" respond or even more infuriating, for knowing how they "should" respond, but refusing to do so out of spite.

Option B: Accept that your technique is not effective here. Accept that your partner is not responding because they are not feeling the things necessary to engender the desired response. Explore why this is happening and adjust. 

"So how do I get back that old magic, Joe? Instead of telling why things don't work, how about some fixes?"

Glad you asked. Here are 3 EZPZ steps you can take.

3 STEPS TO IMPROVED EFFECTIVENESS

STEP 1. Forget about the specific mechanics of a technique and instead, connect to the principle that makes the technique work.

If you get hung up on executing the technique, you are missing the point.

Instead, use whatever techniques (even improvised ones) work by tapping into the underlying principle that makes a technique effective.

STEP 2. Let go of the perspective that people "should" be respond to your actions in a certain way.

If you get hung up on your expectations of how they should respond, your mind will be focused on that and miss out on important information.

Instead, release your expectations and simply observe your partner's reactions. Make necessary adjustments and observe what happens. Lather, Rinse, Repeat.

Learn from what is NOT working as much as what IS.

STEP 3. Practice, practice and more practice.

To truly master anything, you need to keep practicing the relevant techniques over and over again.

"But wait, a-ha! Gotcha! Just before you said, and I quote, "A technique has limited usefulness."

You are totally right. And repeating a technique over and over and expecting it to always work in the real world the same way is a losing approach.

What I mean is that by practicing a technique over and over again, the technique will start to reveal the underlying principles underpinning why it works. In other words, the practice is a door through which you must pass to reach the final destination - understanding the principle. Once you understand the principle, you can apply the principle across various scenarios, even ones that you have not practiced for or encountered before. Understanding the technique allows you to adapt to more situations and respond appropriately. You are free from the tyranny and limitation of a set number of techniques. 

I hope this has been helpful or given you something to think about. If you try this and it work or even if it doesn't, I would love to hear from you!

Next post next Saturday, 6:30 a.m.