MANIACTIVE

Stop discussing your family’s medical conditions on social media channels like FaceBook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Stop blogging about your children’s illnesses. Please.

You want support and information?

Pick up the phone and talk one-on-one with medical professionals. Join a confidential support group. Discuss your concerns over dinner with your family and loved ones. Get counseling.

FaceBook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are completely inappropriate communication channels to bandy about personal medical and health issues. Personally, I don’t want to hear about your teen daughter’s battle with depression, drug addiction, and bulimia. It’s none of my business. Telling stories about your grandmother’s dementia helps you deal with caretaker stress — but probably at the expense of her dignity and privacy. Pimping out your baby son as the face of a chronic disease — not to help him personally, but to “raise money to find a cure for all those afflicted” — is particularly despicable.

Knock it off.

On a certain level, I understand how tempting it can be if you are going through a difficult time with an ailing family member. You want to reach out and feel the love. But laying out others’ illnesses (or your own!) on social media channels to get pity, support, sympathy, or money from strangers and near-strangers can seriously limit opportunities.

Let me summarize a few stories I’ve heard from employers. The stories, in essence, go like this:

“We had a great job candidate. We did a search on FaceBook. Found out through a family member that he has diabetes / arthritis / cancer / high cholesterol / etc. We know this shouldn’t matter, but we also know that we need to keep our health insurance costs down. A well person is likely to be more productive than a chronically ill person. But we don’t have to tell him that. We can just say: ‘Sorry. We found another candidate that more closely met our needs.'”

It’s pretty to think that we have laws and policies to safeguard against this kind of discrimination. It’s wonderful to believe the hiring managers are nice people who can be counted upon to rise above such obvious prejudices. It’s also a sad reality that getting health insurance or even a job is a struggle for many in the United States. Why make it even more difficult?

I don’t want limit the career opportunities of the people I love. I don’t want to narrow their choices for accessing health care. And I don’t want to put their private matters into the hands of strangers so that I can selfishly squeak out a little sympathy for myself. How about you?

How much family health information do you share on FaceBook, Twitter, and LinkedIn? What’s in it for you?

What if you were to approach Twitter as if it were a Native American Talking Circle? In the Talking Circle format, you value every voice equally. You listen respectfully. Everyone can contribute. You share your soul, learn from others, and make decisions. You build ideas and relationships in a collaborative environment.

The Talking Circle uses a simple format that loosely models the synapse and spark of your brain. Ideas bounce from one part of the circle to another. The Talking Circle is often leaderless, but may deploy the use of a talking stick or talking feather (or hashtag!) to help facilitate respect for those who are speaking. Modern teams may toss balls or Frisbees as fun, concrete tools to help keep order while inspiring ideas.

And because Talking Circles and Twitter encourage talk with no apparent purpose other than the act of talking and sharing, they are often dismissed as a valuable business format. But discussions in Talking Circles and Twitter can be oddly transforming. Open discussions can generate new ideas. They release creativity. Open dialogs using a Talking Circle format can foster community, trust, and respect.

And I have to admit, tossing around ideas on Twitter and in Talking Circles can be fun. I also enjoy the element of play — when we toss about a brightly colored Koosh ball, we not only keep order and focus, but we add a bit of levity to a creative meeting. When we banter on Twitter, we not only generate more ideas, but we simultaneously build relationships.

In modern business, new-fangled concepts like open innovation and crowdsourcing are gaining momentum and respect. However, these new buzzwords seem to be based on old-fashioned notions like Talking Circles and Coffee Klatches. (Note the growing popularity of ‘doing business’ in wireless coffee houses.)

What if we ran more meetings and presentations in this time-honored format? Open and leaderless, allowing meaningful ideas to emerge organically? Would we improve collaboration, trust, and creativity? Or would meetings degenerate into endless meetings for the sake of meetings?

How are you using old-school open collaboration formats like Talking Circles in modern environments? How is it working for you?

Sarah Palin writes notes on hers. Bill Clinton is famous for the modified fist with the softened thumbs up gesture. TV pundits vary their hand gestures for emphasis and interest.

What do you do with your hands during a presentation?

For the past year, I’ve seen an alarming trend in presentation hand-gestures — especially by young men during technical presentations.

It’s the lackluster “hands in pockets” gesture made popular by the slacker dufus in those “I’m a PC” commercials. He’s the guy whose posture represents disinterest. He has nothing to do, so he stands with his hands in his pockets, listening to what the more entertaining fellow has to say.

“Hands in Pockets” might be appropriate during the “Q” part of “Q and A”. It can signal, “I’m open to listening to you”.

But it’s not a polite posture to adopt while speaking.

Worse, I frequently see the “hands in pocket” presenter fidget on stage. The hands start to dig deeper into the pockets. Fiddling commences.

I like to imagine the presenter is toying with his keys or a thumb drive, but I’m not entirely sure what he’s playing with down there. It makes me uncomfortable. I tend to lose focus on the presentation, worrying about what he might pull out of his pocket. Curiously, I seldom see women thrust their hands in their trousers while presenting. It seems to be a guy’s gesture.

What do you do with your hands? During your next presentation — watch what you do with your hands. Avoid inadvertently rude gestures. Vary the gestures throughout your speech.

And what’s your “trademark” gesture — the one gesture you can become famous for?

• The Eva Peron?
• The Scott Stapp Rock Star Jesus?
• The Madonna Vogue?
• The Steve Jobs Prayer or Palms Up Buddha Pose?
• A Power Pointer like Avril Lavigne?
• A Heavy Metal Rock Fan?
• Or something peaceful yet anti-establishment?

Just keep your hands where the audience can see ’em, please!

When I’m presenting live, I look for a friendly face in the audience. I like to focus on attentive, smiling, thoughtful faces. They give out a good energy that I respond to as a presenter.

Often, just one friendly audience member can make me a better, more confident presenter.

So when it’s my turn to be an audience member, I try to pay the good audience vibe forward. I feel that a presenter will do a better job if someone in the audience gives the performer “good face”. I try to radiate “positive face energy” to the performer. I make eye contact. I smile and nod at the presenter. If it’s supposed to be funny, I’ll laugh or giggle.

I like to believe that if I’m a positive audience member, my face and energy will encourage the presenter to give a more enthusiastic performance.

Think about this the next time you’re in a deadly dull presentation. We often hear or read about improving our “presentation skills” — but what are we doing to improve our “audience skills?” How are we helping to co-create the presentation experience with the person who’s on stage?

What part can we play — as audience members– to improve the performance of any presenter?