Tim Thompson - Archer English Consulting - Tim's Blog

The Negative Consequences of Overvaluing Negative Feedback

11/6/2022

I recently completed a nine-month online project where I dealt with my own students, the teachers I was training, and the teachers' students. At the end of the project, the client conducted a survey to gauge the feelings of the participants. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive, except for one negative comment. This is what the client decided to focus on. Changes were requested.

I remember working at a very popular English camp over a decade ago that was run during the summer and winter holidays by one of the top universities in South Korea. Students from all over the country attended the camp and enjoyed the experience. Each camp often had between 80 and 100 students. At one of the camps, two students complained that they were bored and there was too much free time. The camp director panicked and completely revised the next camp's schedule to keep the campers "busy" until 8pm. The campers hated that next camp and word spread that the camp was too much work and no fun. Registration for the subsequent camp was too low to hold it and the camp was cancelled. It never recovered, all because 2% of the participants complained.

Too often, management chooses to ignore the stakeholders who are satisfied and focus on the complainers. If something isn't perfect, things need to be tinkered with. I'm not saying that no complaints are valid or justified, just that they need to be taken with a grain of salt. When over 95% percent of the people surveyed are happy, the product or service is pretty damned good! It's a shame that more managers don't recognize this. Instead, they want to tweak and fiddle with that highly successful product or service in search of perfection. Unfortunately, those changes will often do more harm than good. Managers need to focus on the things that are truly broken, not the things that aren't one or two people's cup of tea.

We Use Presentation Skills Every Day

9/22/2021

It's funny how people can get so freaked out by having to deliver a presentation when we use presentation skills for a variety of common interactions on a daily basis. Let's look at some examples.

Take something as simple as having lunch with a few friends and you want to tell them a story about something funny that happened that morning. While talking, you naturally shift your eye contact to each of your friends. You do this to make sure they are paying attention and to gauge their reactions. If the waiter comes by to check on you or someone interrupts to borrow some napkins from your table, it might cause you to pause for a few seconds but then you launch right back into your story. If it takes you a few more seconds to remember where you were in the story, you don't nervously apologize; instead, you collect your thoughts and pick up where you left off.

Next, picture a meeting with your colleagues. The boss asks you to give a brief summary of what has been happening in your department that month. You refer to a few tables and charts to be able to give the exact numbers but mainly you are looking around the room at the other department heads and the boss to see if they are following. If the boss interrupts to clarify something, you consult your notes, answer, and continue on. You know what to say because it's your department, not theirs. No one knows better than you what's been happening in your department and you have been doing this for months now, maybe even years.

If you teach, you present every day. You know when to cut an activity or discussion short because the class is about the end and the bell is going to ring. You know not to turn you back too long on the class because all hell will break loose if you don't watch the kids like a hawk. You make sure the people in the back row can hear you and write on the board with big letters so everyone can see.

However, when we have to present in a room full of our peers (and especially strangers), we forget many of these basic presentation skills. Maybe it's the change in eye level when we're standing and everyone else is sitting. Perhaps it's that we don't feel like an expert on the topic we are presenting that day. It could be that we forget what it's like to be on the other side of the room but common errors find a way to creep back into our presentations. We forget to look around the room as we are speaking. We let small pauses bother us. We stare at our notes or slides so long that we end up talking more to them than to the audience. We go over our allotted time. We use tiny font on our slides and mumble because we're nervous.

The next time you have to give a presentation, try to remember that you speak to people with the spotlight on you all the time. You were probably quite nervous the first time you had to speak at a meeting of the department heads but a year later it was no big deal. Teaching your first class nearly gave you a heart attack but now it's old hat. Presentation situations and stakes will change but it isn't all new. You've done this before so don't forget the basics.

Freelancing and Finances

3/14/2020

These are strange days we are living in. COVID-19 has made face-to-face meetings much more difficult and had caused my regular income streams like workshops, presentations, interviews, and conference hosting to dry up. Thankfully, people still need editing done or the situation would be much more dire. Even though the money coming in has dropped dramatically, there are still bills to pay and I have been dipping into my savings to make ends meet. Times like this make me very thankful that I was able to put away some cash when things were going well.

This situation reminds me of a story my father told me during his first year as the superintendent of a small school system in Kentucky. Following a rain storm, the roof of one of the larger schools started to leak in several places and parts of the school were flooded. My father asked one of the people in his office if there was some sort of emergency fund to help pay for a new roof and clean up the damaged areas. The man he asked had lived in that county all his life and had worked for the school system for decades. "Yes, John," he sighed, "but we've been saving that money for a rainy day." "Jimmy," my father exclaimed, "it's raining inside one of our schools!" Needless to say, he got the money.

It's important to have some cash stashed away for a rainy day , especially if you are a freelancer with an unstable income; but it's equally important to know when it's time to dip into your rainy day fund. You don't want to have to borrow money at a high interest rate or eat instant noodles for a week because you are afraid to touch your savings. Doing this will make recovering even more difficult once regular business resumes. Sure, try to cut corners where you can but don't deprive yourself of basic needs during such a trying and stressful time. Things are going to be especially tough for small businesses and people living paycheck to paycheck. I shared an article on Facebook about this and understand that things could be a lot worse. I'm doing fine, all things considered, but I'd still like more work. So, until things return to normal, stay healthy, wash your hands, and try to hire a freelancer. It's raining hard out there.

Charisma and Presentations

12/29/2019

The Freakonomics podcast put out a special episode on December 26 with host Stephen Dubner chatting with his guest Angela Duckworth. They each asked the other a question and then let the conversation flow from there. Dubner began by asking her a multiple choice question about money, intellect. and grit. She then asked him if charisma could be taught. As the conversation turned to charismatic people being assumed to be good public speakers, I started listening closely to the various ways they defined charisma and thinking about how they applied to my perceptions of a good speaker.

Let's start with several definitions of charisma. Oxford gives two interesting ones. First, "compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others", and second, " a divinely conferred power or talent". I'm not sure that a public speaker at an academic conference needs to inspire devotion like they are some success guru or religious leader so this definition feels too extreme when saying that a good presenter is charismatic. The second one is a little better if you believe that some people are naturally good public speakers just as charisma might be thought of an an inherent trait in some people. (Duckworth and Dubner have an interesting conversation about Bill Clinton and why he is considered to be charismatic by so many people.)

On the podcast, Duckworth also said, "So I think charisma is a kind of— almost like a magnetic force that draws people’s attention in a very positive way. So when we think of somebody who is really charismatic, it’s like you can’t take your eyes off them. And they’re the star." I think a good speaker can be like this. Time flies while they are holding the microphone. Dubner added, "Mine would be something like charisma as the quality of— someone having the quality that makes me want to do what they do or believe what they believe." A good speaker can also be persuasive so this tracks as well.

After a bit more discussion, Duckworth said, "Here’s a narrower definition, because I don’t want it to just be people we like, or likability. I think that when most people think of charisma, they’re thinking about a public— public speaking, like TED or some other venue." And he's where things started to really get tied together.

Eye contact came up. Charismatic people make really strong eye contact and look at whoever they are talking to like they really matter. I feel that eye contact is something that can make or break a presentation. It's rare that an audience member will praise a presentation where the presenter looked mostly at the screen. A good presenter is constantly reading the audience's reactions to what he/she is saying but also making eye contact to build and maintain trust.

Charismatic people signal that the person they are speaking to matters. Dubner and Duckworth bring up Dale Carnegie and say that an event like a book signing, you would make eye contact and use the person's name. As a presenter, you might mention something you heard in an earlier talk or praise the last speaker in the room, something to show that this is a unique event and you aren't giving the same over-rehearsed talk. This audience matters to you.

Maybe the most interesting thing that was brought up was the idea of charismatic people signaling that they have high status. According to Duckworth, in order to be considered charismatic a person needs to give off the vibe of "I like you and I like me." For "I like you', see the previous paragraph. For "I like me", she explains, "How do you signal 'I like me?' Which is really a proxy for 'the world likes me.' That actually is a little more nuanced. But I think that smiling, or basically not being self-deprecating— maybe things like posture help. But I think the most effective way to do it is for somebody else to signal that you’re high-status, or that the world likes you." Doesn't that sound like a good presenter? Confident, not afraid to smile, no excuses or apologies, not putting yourself down, standing up straight... and these come after we submit a bio talking about what we have accomplished that makes us worthy of giving the talk and often we have someone introduce us to also signal that we were chosen to be here and "the world like us".

I found the podcast episode interesting and hope you will give it a listen or just read the transcript in the link. I also hope that the next time you have an opportunity to give a presentation you think not just about what you are going to say (the content) but also about how you are going to say it (the delivery). When you put these two things together, the results are usually positive. Just don't forget to finish on time, even if it means saying a little less than you wanted to. Going over your time signals that you didn't really like the audience that much after all.

Around the World in 80 Keystrokes

12/10/2019

When my 12-year-old daughter comes home from school and I ask how her day was, the response is usually either “fine”, “nothing special”, or “same as usual”. So when she replies, “We did something really cool today!” I’m all ears.

Trip Planning Project
She told me about an activity where her teacher gave them a budget of around $750 and told them to plan a trip to Jeju Island, “The Hawaii of Korea”. The budget would need to be enough for two people to get there, find a place to stay for three nights, eat, and do some sightseeing. We live in Daejeon, located in the middle of South Korea, so her transportation options included flying or taking a train/bus to the coast and then taking a ferry. My daughter has been a several family trips but this was the first time she was put in charge of planning all the details and she really enjoyed the challenge.
The three main skills she developed with this class project were trip planning, internet searching, and budgeting. She said that trip planning wasn’t that hard since the teacher told her what the budget would need to cover; but the devil would be in the details and she would need to hone the latter two skills to be able to plan her trip effectively.
For internet searching, each student was provided with a Galaxy Tab connected to WiFi in the classroom. I understand that many classrooms around the world will not have access to individual devices or wireless internet. However, if the school has a computer lab this could be an excellent use for it. Students could also work in groups if there are not many computers available.
My daughter explained that the teacher didn’t recommend any websites for finding transportation or hotel options so she used search engines like Google or the Korean equivalent, Naver, to look for travel booking websites. She really enjoyed finding good deals and having a say in where to go and what to do.
She felt that budgeting was the hardest part of the project and as a parent I couldn’t help but smile and think, “She finally understands what I mean when I say that we can’t afford something!” She admitted to me that it was challenging to decide whether to stay in a nicer place and slash the food budget or give herself a little more to eat with. She also decided to try to enjoy free activities like hiking and going to the beach instead of buying museum and show tickets. This is a real-life conundrum that adults face when planning a trip so it was great to see her recognize how difficult it is to make these tough decisions.
She said that over the course of the semester the students did several versions of the project. They could choose to travel alone or with a friend and stay in Korea or travel overseas. The project was very useful because in addition to honing the skills I mentioned above, there was so much learner agency involved. There were no right or wrong answers. She had the freedom to make all the decisions and she just needed to stay under budget. Kudos to her teacher for planning this activity!

Foreign Country Investigation Project
I have introduced a similar project while leading English teacher training workshops. First, I put the teachers in groups and distribute five or six kinds of foreign coins and paper money that I collected during overseas trips to each group. We compare and contrast the different currencies and talk about how to scaffold lessons using the money as a prompt. For lower-level students, we could focus on teaching vocabulary describing the colors, shapes, denominations, and the pictures on the money. We could also teach comparative words like “bigger”, “more colorful”, and “more valuable” to compare two bills or coins. We might even ask higher-level students to guess why they think the pictures on the money were chosen to represent that country and then have discuss their own country’s currency. It’s interesting to see how both teachers and students can struggle to remember all the people and objects on their money.
If the students are at a conversational level, we can take things a step further and do an internet search to learn more about one of the countries. I usually ask the teachers to choose the country that they know the least about or want to visit the most. Then I ask them to search online and find the capital, the population, the flight time from Seoul to the capital, how much the money from that country that they have at the table is worth in Korean money, and three interesting things to do or see if they travel there. They love the activity and think their students would enjoy it too. One thing to be aware of is that even if the students to search in English, the location services and device’s language settings may cause the results to be displayed in the local language. This happened with teachers’ phones so you be sure that it can also happen with your students’ devices.

Travel agencies around the world took a hit when websites like Booking.com, Google Flights, and TripAdvisor started becoming popular. These websites made planning a trip incredibly easy by aggregating many possibilities and putting them all in one place. They can also act as a virtual gateway to help our students learn more about other countries and cultures while giving them experience working with a budget by prioritizing different aspects of a trip and deciding where to splurge. Regardless of the language they are using, online trip planning is the kind of class project that is practical, fun, and one of the few things my daughter came home and raved about. In my book, that makes it outstanding.

Freelancer's Nightmare

10/25/2019

Well, it finally happened. The thing I had heard about happening to other people but never thought would happen to me.

My phone rang this morning from a number I didn't recognize while I was on a Facebook call with another client. I ignored it. They called again and I ignored it. Then I finished the first call and they called for a third time.

Her: "Hey, Tim. Just checking to see if you're almost here."

Me: (pause) "I'm coming down this afternoon. The talk is tomorrow, right?"

Her: (desperation in voice) "No. It's today. Where are you now?"

Me: (squirming): "Oh no. I'm at home." (doing furious travel calculations in my head)

Her: "Can you get here in an hour?"

Me: "I'm so sorry. No, that's impossible."

Her: Ok, I.. uh.. ok... I have to.. umm.. talk to you later."

I blew it. I missed the talk by writing the wrong day on my calendar. She sent me the right date, I just wrote down another day and made that my reality. I sent her a message lamely offering to Skype in but she didn't reply. I don't blame her. She was probably furiously (two meanings) scanning the audience for someone who could jump in and save the day.

Totally my fault. Lost wages. Lost hotel fee. Working on cancelling the train ticket. But that's just money. Will this client ever trust me again? That's the real nightmare.

Emcee Duties

10/14/2019

Hello from chilly Pyeongchang, Korea. Today and tomorrow I'm working as the emcee/presider/chairperson for the EARTH 2019 symposium. Not everyone knows what this kind of job (gig) entails so I thought I would share some details in case you find yourself doing a job like this and are unsure how to do it well.

The first thing I do is to meet with the organizers and discuss their expectations for the opening ceremony, plenary session(s), concurrent sessions, special session, panels, gala dinners, receptions, or anything else that I will be expected to lead. Once I have a clear idea of how they expect things to go, I can try to help everything run as smoothly as possible from the front of the room. I rely heavily on the people behind the scenes to make sure the tech is working, people are in the right place at the right time, and any changes or surprises are relayed to me so that I can make the appropriate announcements. Surprises are bad and make everyone look unprofessional so communication is key. I'm also asking questions and double checking schedules so that I can share the most up-to-date and accurate information. I also check how to pronounce people's names and verify that they made it to the event before introducing them.

I'm also putting out fires as the come up. These include delayed speakers, schedule changes, technical issues, or an invited speaker using their first language when the official language of the conference is something else. Even checking to see if the restaurant can still take us for lunch if we're ten minutes early is something that comes up when you're the one telling people where to go. Other announcements include when to come back from coffee breaks (Top tip: Tell them to come back five minutes earlier that you really expect them to), where to go for meals, when the bus leaves for a tour, and of course reminding the participants (in vain) to turn the phones to a silent mode.

A good presider will also socialize with the participants and help the upcoming speakers relax. We greet attendees from previous events and make them feel welcomed. We often end up checking and revising the speeches that will be made by members of the organizing committee and visiting government officials. In short, we need to do a lot more than just stand behind a podium and read the names and bios of the next speaker. You need to enjoy being in the spotlight if you do this job and you need to be prepared and detail-oriented. Finally, don't be surprised when people talk to you like they know you. They have been watching you and listening to you all day so they don't see you as a stranger. If this happens, I guess that means you have done a good job. Good luck!

Summary of My Advice for Freelancers

7/21/2019

I have been a freelancer for three and a half years and blogging for over five. If you click on the "Freelancing" link on the right side of this page you will go straight to my blog posts focused on freelancing. But since it's a slow Sunday, I thought I would (re)share my five main tips for people considering freelancing or who are new to not having a regular paycheck.

1. Don't expect to be paid promptly

I check my bank account all the time. In fact, one of my main down time activities is checking to see who owes me money. It's almost always an extensive list. Most clients are very detail oriented when it comes to telling me what they want you to do, but when it comes time to pay me then dropping the ball is par for the course. "Sorry, that's not my department" is something I hear on a regular basis, along with "I'll look into it" and, of course, being ghosted until they want me to work again.

So, it's important to have a financial cushion, especially during the first year or two. In an earlier post I suggested two months of your old salary but now I think three months is a better idea. I had a really slow winter this year so now I'm suggesting three months of cash in your bank account ready to see you through a really slow period.

2. Know where opportunities are posted

If you have talked to me face-to-face about freelancing, I've probably told you that I get more work from Facebook (and even Twitter) than LinkedIn. In fact, I've gotten almost no work from LinkedIn. There are several good job posting groups that have helped me find work on Facebook and several other websites where I see the kinds of jobs I am interested in. You do have to wade through a lot of bad gigs to find them though. Be prepared to roll your eyes at some real doozies.

That being said, I'd rather look for gigs than advertise my services. When people go web searches to find someone who does a certain job (like editing), they are invariably looking for the lowest price. They still want the highest quality of course but mainly they are looking for the person offering the lowest price. No thanks. I'll stick to answering job posts.

3. Build a network of people who will recommend you

Yes, this means being friendly with the competition. You need to know people who do jobs similar to yours who will call you when their client needs an extra person or they have a conflict and can't do two jobs at the same time. Sometimes one person's trash is another person's treasure and your competitor (frienemy?) will be offered a job that isn't right for their skill set or just isn't interesting for them and it's awesome when they think of you. Don't forget to do the same for them. Networking benefits need to flow both ways.

4. Look for patterns of busy periods and plan your down time accordingly

It can be tricky for a freelancer to plan a holiday and it is a real punch in the gut to be on vacation and get an email offering you a really interesting or lucrative gig while you're away. Sure, a lot of work can be done online these days and that actually puts you in another bind (do you work during your vacation or not?) but it's the job where you actually need to be there and there is no wiggle room in the schedule that burns. So if you start to notice that Februarys and Octobers are usually slow, start planning your trips during those times and lower your chances of getting burned.

5. Be prepared to take on some unappealing gigs to help you land better gigs down the line

Some jobs REALLY feel like work. You look at how much you are being paid and realize that you'd rather be not working than doing this job. Hopefully you won't need to be doing a lot of work that makes you feel this way (I mean, why did you go into freelancing if you don't like that field?) but if you are a freelancer who takes on a wide range of gigs then you might have to walk through some alligator-filled swamps to reach the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

If you do have to take some bad gigs to make ends meet during the slower times, try to accept the ones that will give you experience in a weaker section of your CV. Even if that gig is no fun at that time, you might be able to refer to your experience doing it when a much better gig comes along later that you wouldn't have been qualified for without it.

In summary, freelancing can be very rewarding and while I am most happy with the decision to do this full time, it isn't for everyone. You need to have your finances in order, your network in place, and a solid client list if you want to be able to sleep for the first six months. Best of luck and feel free to leave a comment if you have any tips to add.

Networking Nudges

7/13/2019

I have a really cool project coming up. It's the kind of project that I dreamed about when I left my university position three and half years ago and it basically came about thanks to Twitter. Sure, it's a little more complicated than that, but someone who read one of my tweets followed up with a DM that led to me joining a consortium of freelance consultants and now I'm going to Tunisia for a week in September to train Tunisian English teachers. All because of a tweet, that led to a direct message, that led to a nudge to consider contacting the consulting group, to joining the group, and to letting them know I was available in September... All those things needed to happen to make this possible (and, of course, having some relevant experiences on my CV to make me an eligible candidate), but I want to focus on the nudge. If I hadn't followed up on a friendly suggestion, I would have missed out on this opportunity. And there are so many other examples of this happening for me (and hopefully for you too).

Another example of a nudge (and one that also came via Twitter) was being introduced to a training director in Ukraine by someone I interacted with on Twitter. We have never met in person but have a lot of the same people in our PLNs. I sent the training director an email, expressed my interest in returning to Ukraine, dropped the name of a professor in Kyiv that I had done some workshops for last year, and suggested that we could all work together to organize a PD event. Now, it looks like that's going to happen in October. This was thanks to two nudges, first my Twitter friend's, then mine.

Sometimes nudges lead directly to good things. A former student sent me a Facebook message one evening asking if I would be interested in going to Kazakhstan as a "foreign scientist" for four weeks. One of his mentors was the dean of a department and they were in a position to invite a visiting consultant. Most professors wouldn't be able to leave their schools in the middle of the semester so he thought of me and nudged me to apply. Less than three months later I was in Almaty. It was a great experience and I hope to return for an invited lecture in November.

Finally, some nudges lead to good things but in a more indirect way. Four years ago, one of my friends (and a fellow editor) was working with a professor from Russia who was employed by a university in Seoul. He was editing her academic journal articles before she submitted them for publication and asked if I could take over. I did and worked with her for around a year. During that time, one of her professional acquaintances in Moscow asked her if she knew a good editor that could work with the journal she was affiliated with. She introduced me and I have been working with that journal for several years now. It has been a rewarding experience to help the authors polish their papers and the journal pays well and on time.

When someone respects you enough to nudge you toward something that they think you would be a good professional match for, it really is an honor. It's not easy sticking your neck out for someone and putting your own reputation on the line. So, be sure to thank them and hopefully you will be in a position to nudge them (and others) toward a great opportunity somewhere down the line.

Presentation Peer Feedback

6/22/2019

It can be difficult to get students and trainees to give each other productive feedback, especially when their culture values social harmony. This leads to every trainee's presentation being "very good" and any additional feedback being rather generic.

Something I have started doing recently with my corporate trainees is asking them to give one positive comment and one negative comment to their groups members after each presentation. To make it more neutral, I ask them to use the following language.

"I like the way they ______________."
and
"I wish they had ___________."

Some examples could be "I like the way she presented energetically but I wish she had looked up from his notes more often."

By doing this, the trainees show that they were paying attention to the other trainees' talks and the presenter gets more feedback that just mine. Sometimes the other trainees notice things that I didn't or we just have different opinions about what was enjoyable or distracting. It also shows that they are learning what I have been teaching about good and bad presentation habits.

I have been happy using these prompts for peer feedback in presentation training and hope they will work for you too.