Q&A

Kevin Daley

The CEO of communications training company Communispond Inc. has some tips for the conversationally challenged.

IT professionals are often accused by business peers of lacing their language with high-tech acronyms. What are some techniques they can use to break free of this?

This is a hard thing to get across sometimes, but there are five forms of evidence to get an idea across: personal stories, analogy, judgment of experts, analysis and statistics/facts. Stats and facts are the most often used. There's an Indian proverb: "Tell me a fact, and I'll learn. Tell me a truth, and I'll believe. Tell me a story, and it will live in my heart forever." Storytelling is the most powerful but least often used form of evidence. Personal stories are the best weapons you've got. I trust the person who's delivering a story; I believe in the person who's telling it.

IT professionals also are often introverts. What are some techniques that can be used to work through shyness?

The most important thing is to know what it is you want to say. People may know what they want to say, but without going through the thought process of exactly what that is, they can have a hard time saying it. This thought process includes rehearsal, including using your mouth and body language. Communicating is energy released and energy received. We have to deliver whatever we have to say with energy.

What are the best types of courses to help people to become more effective verbal communicators?

Through the Communispond program, people give 11 to 13 talks over two days that are videotaped. Each talk has a purpose and objective, and they are critiqued by the instructor. And then they see it on videotape. The only way to judge a talk is by its impact on the listener. It doesn't matter how comfortable you feel up there speaking. What matters is how the audience feels about it. Speakers think they're the star of the show, but they're not unless the audience feels they've been given something of value. Everybody can become twice as good as they are now as speakers. It's not how many times you've done this thing [public speaking]; it's how well you do it. IT people tend to keep their heads down more, but they can learn these things.

34% / 17%

Percentage of IT workers who said they have gained more than 10 or more than 20 pounds, respectively, in their current jobs. As bad as that may seem, IT workers are svelte compared with financial services and government employees. Still, IT workers' weight gains are above average across all workers who took the online survey, the numbers were 26% and 12%, respectively.

Source: CareerBuilder.com survey of approximately 7,700 employees (not all of them IT workers), May 2008

The Shape of Retirement

All Fortune 100 companies offer retirement plans. That's not news. And for years, companies have moved away from defined benefit plans, in which they commit to providing certain amounts after retirement, and toward defined contribution plans where they provide certain amounts ahead of retirement, and what you are able to draw afterward depends on the performance of your investments in the interim. That's not news either. What is news are the figures quantifying the breakdown between defined benefit and defined contribution plans, recently released by Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc. The compensation consultancy found that not only did participation by companies in defined benefit plans decrease from 90% in 1985 to 54% in 2007, but the percentage of Fortune 100 companies that offer pure defined benefit plans, rather than a hybrid with some defined contribution elements, also fell from 89% to 28% over the same period.

Page compiled by Jamie Eckle.

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