Touro Communication Club Notes #70
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Communication Quote of the Week
“Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.”
Ambrose Bierce, a late 19th century American journalist, short-story writer and satirist who wrote The Devil's Dictionary
This Week: Wednesday, April 29, 2009
2 m Room 314 - Midtown
7th Speech Contest
2 m Room 314 - Midtown
7th Speech Contest
For the past seven semesters, the Communication department has sponsored a Speech contest which highlights the finalists from three Communication classes: “Survey of Human Communication,” “Public Speaking” and “Interpersonal Communication.” These finalists have been chosen by their classmates to represent them in the Contest. The quality of the performances is consistently rather impressive. Cash prizes await the top three winners chosen by a panel of judges who are made up of Touro faculty, administration and staff. Refreshments are available during the wait for the judges’ decision.
A Note for Communicators:
Strategy: Finding models to emulate.
Tactic: Observe our own and others’ public behavior.
Leadership is an important field of communication. Successful leadership requires effective communication. Lousy communication equals lousy leadership. Communication is the invisible fabric that ties all aspects of an organization together.
In some way each of us is a leader. We start with ourselves: Are we providing good leadership of ourselves? How can we improve our communication with ourselves? During the campaign, President Barack Obama was frequently overheard talking to himself: “I must do better. I must do better.” (Source: New York Times – where else?)
From this corner, President Obama appears to be setting an extraordinary model of leadership, one which I have never witnessed in the dozen Presidents in my lifetime. I keep asking myself: What does Obama’s model demonstrate to a teacher of Communication?
Bottom line: Obama appears to possess the best leadership qualities of our Presidential legacy – and then some.
The first thing that comes to mind is that Obama is really smart. He seems to have a strong intellectual grasp of so many domestic and foreign issues combined with a visceral understanding of how to address them. He seems to have thought long and hard about all that a President faces. His background as a community organizer has given him “on the ground” experience in translating abstractions into reality.
[Digression: I’m not convinced that America has had many really intelligent presidents. All have had some measure of intelligence but that intelligence was colored with other factors. Some have had clear ideologies (FDR. Johnson, Reagan and Bush II). Some have had failed potential (JFK and Bush I). Others have been muddle-headed (Ford and Carter). Still others have been driven by hubris – pride (Nixon and Clinton). The pragmatists have Truman and Eisenhower as their Presidents.]
Secondly, Obama seems to know what he’s doing. He has a plan and he’s executing that plan. Unlike most of his predecessors, Obama did not just hit the ground running on November 3rd, 2008. He was an immediate avalanche of activity. Executive orders reversing Bush II policies, meetings with the Republicans and governors as well as cabinet appointments shot out of the transition team like 4th of July fireworks. All before he was inaugurated on January 20th.
Certainly, the worst global economic disaster in 70 year was fueling much of this behavior. But I would argue that Obama would have behaved similarly even if he had not faced so many domestic and foreign crises.
Thirdly, Obama’s ability to execute his plan, despite several bumps in the road, is a testament to his organizational skills and motivation. Since his inauguration, Obama has moved with alacrity and controversial force on both the domestic economic front while reaching out to the world stage .Obama’s approach to the home-grown problems of the bank and auto bailouts and the forced resignations of Detroit CEOs mesh easily with international meetings of the G8, G20 and meeting of the Latin-American countries. Obama seems to have been everywhere in a short time.
Lastly and most importantly for us as Communicators, Obama possesses a singularly astounding ability to write and speak in an unadorned prose style that is clear and easily understood. His two books and many speeches demonstrate a superb mind at work with a pragmatic sense of how to implement the restoration of the promise of America, lost in last eight years.
Next Wednesday, April 29, is President Obama’s 100th day in office. This is an artificial milestone invented during the Kennedy era. Past presidents have been given a “Get Out of Jail Free” card during this period when nothing much was expected and the opposition suspended attacks.
Obama has used this “honeymoon” to establish himself as a President with formidable skills to lay the foundation for a hopeful four years. In 100 days, Obama has erased the despair of the previous eight years. We can only pray that America’s future remains secure in the hands of this young leader who had a very thin resume.
UPCOMING CONVERSATIONS:
Upcoming:
May 6 – “The Alabama Experience” – students talk of their recent Civil Rights trip to Alabama
May 13 – “Presenting Jason Alan Carvell” – a conversation with a Touro Communication professor who teaches, acts, directs, sculpts and does television voice-overs.
Tentative: May 20 – “Talking to Women” – an open discussion about what women expect when they talk with men. (A follow up “Talking to Men’ will be scheduled.)
What happened on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 Politics (Conflict) & Communication II
No one who came to this session even realized that Wicke forgot about the announced topic and led the group in a spirited discussion of “Conflict and Communication.” Those who joined the fray included familiar figures Marcus Vyandorf, Meggy Lindsay, James Millner, Brian Brown, Anna Indelicato and Hal Wicke. Three newcomers were welcome additions to the group; Jerusalem Abraham, Alexandra Serebryanikova and Jennie Proano.
Hal wrote several items on the board to start the discussion:
- What is conflict?
- Why is there conflict?
- How do we recognize conf lict?
If we operate on the premise that “People are different,” doesn’t it seem that conflict is inevitable? Unfortunately, many people seem to be surprised when there is conflict. Maybe these people are operating in the bubble of their own world and operate, like good narcissists, that they are the center of the universe. [The current financial meltdown seems to have been led by people who thought they were “Masters of the Universe.”]
If people are different, they automatically are different in every way – different beliefs, different expectations, different experience – all of which lead to different behaviors.
We went around the group identifying situations in which each had had a conflict. Without revealing the details of the conflict, several patterns emerged. External conflicts emerged over
Internal conflicts can develop from loss and fear. Hal suggested that we had enough to explore with external conflicts that we could explore internal conflicts at another time.
We asked ourselves what kinds of situations can produce conflict
- External success – grades, money, position, “toys”
- Competition – conflict is built into competition of any kind. A sports conflict is refereed against a set of rules.
Plus the usual suspects of money, power, control, recognition and dozens of others.
Hal observed that the typical class material was developed deductively. We already know the theory as we move from general to specific. Our discussions in the Communication Club try to move inductively – from specific to general, trying to identify patterns from the specifics that are suggested. This approach takes a longer time, but seems to be more satisfying to everyone as we easily notice patterns from the evidence we generate.
We agreed that everyone wants to believe “I am right.” Conflict occurs when “I don’t feel right” or someone is trying to prove me wrong, or bad or inferior. [A natural extension of this dilemma is the negotiation strategy of “Win-Win” from “Getting to Yes” of the Harvard Negotiation Project.]
We also raised the question of balance in a conflict. When one is in a conflict, the mind – and body – are out of balance. And the body seeks “homeostasis.” That’s why when we have too much to drink or do something to the extreme; we are out of balance and feel terrible physically. In a verbal or physical conflict, the “fighters” fight to win to gain internal balance through “winning.” [Much more at another time.]
Someone mentioned the new film, “He Just Not Into You,” a comedy about relationships that go wrong, largely from the female viewpoint. If you haven’t seen it, you might consider looking at it from a Communication viewpoint. The conflict sometimes is not so obvious, but becomes obvious in an unexpected way. The relationships are always asymmetrical and out of balance with the female apparently never in control. (Much more later on this one!]
After 90 minutes, the energy seemed to flag, so Hal asked the Lorinda Question: What did we learn from this discussion? Answers varied in detail, but everyone found the discussion worthwhile.
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Let’s not forget Carlisle Yearwood’s IDEA several weeks ago. He suggested we develop a 3x4 index card with basic Touro information on it. We’ll talk more about this in the future.
As always, these sessions are open for everyone to attend. Bring a friend and join the excitement. See you next time.
Hal Wicke
Hal Wicke
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