I had an interesting chat with my hairdresser yesterday after he told me about a conversation he had had with his twenty-year-old daughter. She apparently made the statement that “love has become devalued” today. Asked what she meant, she said, “Well think about it. We say we love our lovers, we love God, we love our country. But we also love movies, ice cream and new shoes. Love doesn’t mean anything any more.”

That sounds like a cynical comment from one so young, and it’s not quite accurate. It’s not love that has lost its meaning, but the word love. That’s because we use it indiscriminately, perhaps because we’re too lazy to think of an alternative. And love is just one of many fine words we’ve treated this way. What about amazing, awesome, unique, utilize, brilliant, totally?

I believe there is a place for slang and colloquial expressions, and I enjoy using them. But I also enjoy learning new words that improve the way I express myself. Just now, for example, my spellchecker told me I had misspelled colloquial, and when I looked in my dictionary to find the correct spelling I also noticed clamour, chicanery and contextual. These are interesting, useful words with specific meanings, and I’ll make a game of working them into a conversation soon.

What are your favourite words? Share them with us by leaving a comment, and consider adding other readers’ favourites to your own lexicon. I’d love be intrigued to hear your choices.

Thanks to all who responded to my request for topic ideas. If you’d like to add your input, it’s not too late as there are still a few blanks. Also, I will probably add more dates during the year. The survey is here.

In the meantime, here is the schedule I’ve compiled, based on what you said you wanted. There are a couple of repeats of topics I know are very popular.

2010
March 18: Pithy Presentations — how to create a dynamite business presentation, support it with visuals that actually aid and deliver it with style
April 15:  Meaningful Meetings — how to hold meetings that meet their objectives, get things done and waste nobody’s time
May 13: Beyond the To Do List— how to take control of your workday, stay productive despite the chaos around you and get things done
June 10: Excellent Email — how to quickly and easily write business email that communicates and gets a response, and how to take control of your email instead of having it control your workday
July 8: Get to Grips with Grammar — Helen’s lively, non-technical approach to correcting the most common grammatical mistakes
Aug. 5:  Better Business Writing — how to write memos, letters, reports and even email that get your message across clearly and concisely every time
Sep. 9: Communicate to Influence — how to get people to do what you want without bribery, blackmail or a magic wand!
Oct. 7: Yin and Yang at Work — how to happily and productively work with people of the opposite sex — and even learn to understand what they’re talking about!
Nov. 4: To be arranged — open to topic suggestions and requests
Dec. 2: Sowing and Growing Your Network — how to “work the room” at networking events and still enjoy yourself, and how to transform all those business cards into a living, breathing network that will serve you for your entire life. Get ready for the busy networking activities of the Holiday Season!

2011
January: To be arranged — open to topic suggestions and requests
February:  To be arranged — open to topic suggestions and requests

I hope many of you will join me on one or more Wilkie Webinars. The current webinar is always posted on its own page on my MHW Communications website, so check it out now if you want to deliver Pithy Presentations!

Remember to add your topic suggestions either on the survey or right here as a blog comment. Thanks for your input!

The way you handle questions and answers can have a huge impact on your presentation. Perhaps you share two complaints that often come up in my presentation workshops:

1. You can never follow your planned presentations because people keep interrupting with questions that pull you off track.
2. You invite questions at the end, nobody asks any and you fade back to your seat in silence — not the rousing finish you had hoped for!

Here are my suggestions for handling both these situations.

1. Right at the start of your presentation, tell them you will have a Q&A session at the end and you will take all the time necessary then to answer all their questions. Then, any time someone interrupts to ask a question, you can politely say, “I’m glad you asked that question, and I do intend to answer it. However, the details fall more naturally into a later part of my presentation, so please bear with me until I reach that part. If you’d like more details, I’d be happy to fill them in during the Q&A session at the end.” This is a very reasonable request and most people will go along with it. Adapt the words to suit your own style as well as the situation and audience, and be prepared to use them consistently.
2. When you have finished delivering your content, but before you do your “big close”, say something like, “And now, just before I bring my presentation to a close, I’d like to invite any questions you may have.” Complete your Q&A, and then close with your planned “big finish”. If there are no questions, just smile, slide easily into your planned close and leave the platform or the front of the room with your head held high, a smile on your face and the confidence that you have left your listeners with the final thoughts that YOU want them to have.

Remember, it’s your show, and you must control as much of it as possible — and that includes Questions and Answers.

If presentations are an important part of your job, you’ll love my upcoming Wilkie Webinar. It’s on March 18 and the topic is Helen’s 9 Rules for Pithy Presentations. I’ll have more tips and techniques on Q&A as well as how to handle handouts, visual aids and presentation nerves — oh yes, and more about that important “big finish” and why you need it. Details at http://www.mhwcom.com/wilkiewebinars.html

It had to happen — social media has had such a huge impact on worldwide communication that companies and technologies are springing up to help organizations harness its power for internal communication. As a communication specialist, I see this as a double-edged sword.

On the positive side, anything that improves true communication at work is a good thing. Poor communication is at the root of so many problems that it’s hard to argue against attempts to improve it.

On the other side, though, I’ve seen too many attempts to use technology to deal with issues that are essentially human ones. An example I’ve written about before is knowledge management: it’s fine to have technology that manages the knowledge within an organization, but how do you get the knowledge into the system in the first place? That requires human communication skills. When it comes to introducing social media technology into business enterprises, I see similar challenges.

For example, if a person can’t convey a message in writing to one recipient via email, what happens when that same person blasts an incomprehensible, or at least ambiguous, message to all reaches of the company via an internal social network? Does that keep everyone in the loop, or just drive everyone loopy?

I’d love to have your input on this topic. Has your organization introduced internal social media platforms such as Yammer, Jive or Box.net, or any other such technology? If so, how is it working out? Has it improved communication? How has it affected email use? Has it been generally embraced, or are people resisting?

This is a fascinating and timely subject for those of us who are interested in communication, so please weigh in with your comments. I can’t wait to hear what you have to tell me on this one!

My Wilkie Webinars are off to a great start, and my thanks to those of you who have attended and provided such positive feedback.

Some folks are planning to participate in most or all of the upcoming webinars and have asked me for a schedule of the topics. While I have a few topics in mind, I would like your input before I schedule the whole year. I’m also working on some “packages”, and the questionnaire answers will also help me put those together, so your input would be very valuable to me.

If you’d like to help me develop the best possible program for Wilkie Webinars over the next year, please complete the very short questionnaire at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GCTQVB7 (If you’re not much into questionnaires, feel free to put your suggested topics in as a comment.)

Thanks!