Five Things I've Learned from Teaching in China, Part 1

[This post is the first of a five-part series on what I have learned from teaching in China.]

I am writing from my room in the Shaoyuan Guest House on the campus of Peking University in Beijing. Tomorrow I begin teaching Report Writing and Presentation Skills to the first of three graduate classes of approximately 30 students per class for the Beijing International MBA program (BiMBA).

One of the great pleasures of teaching adults is that I learn as much as I teach. In this case, I have not taught even my first class, yet I have already learned an important lesson. On the way from my hotel room to BiMBA is a serene wooded path that leads to a scenic lake. On the path is a monument to Cai Yuanpei (1868-1940), a Chinese intellectual who became the university president in 1917. Yuanpei worked extremely hard to make the university a sanctuary of academic freedom. His memory is so revered on the campus that fresh flowers always appear at the foot of the monument, and Chinese students often can be found standing quietly before the bronze statue. Perhaps they are reflecting about Yuanpei's legacy. Maybe they're saying, "Please inspire me to pass this important exam," or "Thank you for making this educational opportunity available to me" or "I hope to accomplish in my life just a small measure of what you have."

Whatever these students devotedly whisper to the statue, I have learned something from witnessing this scene: that Chinese students greatly value intellectual history. Therefore, I will surely work hard to contribute whatever I can to my students' intellectual development during my month here.

Got a Life Changer?

People who tell me they want to write but have little to write about just don’t get it. I can think of dozens of moments—literally seconds in the vast timeline of my life—that changed me. And I’m not talking about when as a pedestrian I evaded an oncoming truck that would have flattened me, or when I stepped into an abandoned warehouse with the elevator doors closing behind me and two Dobermans snarling at me for an endless twenty seconds until the elevator opened again. No Bruce Willis moments, although those are pretty cool too.

I’m thinking about the time as a ten-year-old kid I landed in Luqa Airport, Malta, after my first trans-Atlantic flight ever to meet for the first time relatives I had heard about my entire young life. I remember being tossed from one relative to another, kissed and squeezed and never before having felt so much undeserved love. Or a decade later when in the Montreux Jazz Festival, Switzerland, I heard Sonny Rollins soloing on his booming tenor saxophone during “To a Wild Rose,” making me a committed jazz fan for the rest of my life. Or only half a year later when I sat in a college classroom checking out a woman sitting next to me who I did not know would become my wife of 36 years and become the mother of my two daughters.

I bring up these moments for two reasons. First, to remind anyone who wants to write that you do have plenty to write about. Second, to remind myself that new life-changing moments await me as I head to China next week for the first time to teach report writing and presentation skills to graduate students at the Beijing International MBA program. Writing opportunities lie everywhere: notice and record them when they happen.

If you’ve got a life changer, I’d enjoy hearing about it!

Useful Pointers on Presenting

As demand for my course Creating Powerful PowerPoint Decks grows, WORDS ON THE LINE readers should find helpful the excellent series by the Harvard Business Review (HBR) on designing and delivering presentations. Written by Nancy Duarte, these three articles appear as promotions of Duarte's latest book HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations. Having read her book slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations, I can attest to quality of her insights into what makes a great presenter and presentation.    

The HBR posts are helpful reminders to experienced presenters contending with the latest technology as well as to people who are new to the live or remote presentation world. Here are the links:

• How to Present to Senior Executives 
• Create a Presentation Your Audience Will Care About
• Do Your Slides Pass the Glance Test

The Value of the Writing Process

A participant of a recent course, Sage Robertson, wrote a thank-you note to me. I always appreciate receiving these messages, and this one was especially memorable because he included a memorable learning moment, one that I stress whenever I teach the writing process. In his words:

I wrote down many important points of yours yesterday but I was most inspired by "If you get stuck, it's because you didn't plan enough."

I'm truly glad that Mr. Robertson took that point to heart for two reasons, one concerning his self-development as a writer and the other as a reminder to myself as a writing consultant. 

First, when introducing himself to the class, he said that while he loves reading good writing, he finds writing itself a difficult, painful activity. For this reason, I give him a lot of credit for taking the course in the first place. It shows he is committed to overcoming challenges that can affect his job performance.

Second, his comment is praiseworthy because he focused on an intangible learning moment, a process-related takeaway, something  instructional designers shy from because they fear that learners may find process-related topics to be immeasurable, and therefore, unteachable, while product-related topics are more desirable simply because they are measurable. My 35 years of teaching writing tells me that this thinking is wrong. Using the writing process sensibly goes a longer way than anything else toward improving writing because it instills confidence in writers, provides multiple points of entry into problematic writing assignments, and promotes efficiency throughout the writing task.

Thanks for the note, Sage!

We Love Puppies and Rainbows

When  I saw Jennifer Thompson from Selective Insurance in one of my writing classes, I immediately remembered a comment she made in a class she had with me earlier this year. She said that while she felt comfortable about her ability to get to the point, she wanted to improve her tone by putting into her written messages more "puppies and rainbows." I laughed then and seeing her again several months later, the comment remained fresh.

What Jennifer meant was adding more of what I call context language, the nice-to-know or helpful-to-know information, to support the content language, the need-to-know information. Here are three examples, from different fields, of writing without context language followed by examples that try to balance content with context.

Example 1: Retail - from a Sales Associate to a Customer 

Content Language Only: We do not sell that product in this store.  

Content Language with Context Language: We're sorry that we have run out of stock for that product because it's so popular. If you can't get to our crosstown store, we'd be happy to get one from there into our store within three days or have the store mail it to you for a nominal charge.

Example 2: Business to Business - from a Client to a Vendor

Content Language Only: Your invoice is incorrect.

Content Language with Context Language: We see a discrepancy between your invoice and our attached record of the services you provided. Would you please clarify the difference with a breakdown of the services rendered or readjust your invoice accordingly?

Example 3: Internal Corporate: from the IT Help Desk to a Senior Manager

Content Language Only: You did not send us your slide deck.

Content Language with Context Language: We want to ensure that your presentation goes as expected, so please send us your slide deck today, and we will load it for you tomorrow morning.

Notice the value added in the second draft of each message. In the first draft, the writer gets to the point but would be far too blunt if the relationship with the reader were not well established. In the second draft, the writer still gets to the point but provides reasoning or simple good manners.

Yes, Ms. Thompson might have called context language "puppies and rainbows," but she was not downplaying its importance in driving home a message. She's smart enough to realize that she works for a client-focused company. 

Be sure to balance content with context. Too little context will make you come across as blunt, insensitive, or thoughtless; too much of it will make you look ingratiating, verbose, or unfocused.  Thanks for the reminder, Jennifer.

The 3, Uh 4, Big Recruiter Questions

When Forbes Magazine published the article "Top Executive Recruiters Agree There Are Only Three True Job Interview Questions", I had engaging dialogues with  colleagues and clients in the writing consulting industry about the topic. The first two questions (Can you do the job? Will you love the job?) relate to intrapersonal skills, how you deal with yourself; the third question (Can we tolerate working you?) relates to interpersonal skills, how you deal with others.

Since interviewees may answer preemptively yes, yes, and yes to these three terribly open-ended questions, recruiters have many indirect ways of asking them to yield specific responses and gain real insights into the job candidate. For the first they might ask, How long have you been in this industry? What projects have you completed? With whom have you collaborated? How did the project turn out? For the second they might ask, Have you done work at home? How do you describe your work to your friends and family? Has your formal education prepared you for this work? What connections do you see with your life and your work? And for the third they might ask, Why did you leave your last job? What were your teammates and managers like? Do you stay in touch with any of your former coworkers? What do you miss about your previous job?

Undoubtedly, these three questions are terrific for opening the door to real conversations and getting to the bottom of what makes a candidate tick. That's exactly why I believe a fourth question can reinforce the other three and effectively close the door to the interview. That fourth question is Can you live with yourself by working with us? 

I speak not only for myself but for hundreds of others who have talked to me about their work experiences. Many of them have said they want more from life. Sure, they can do the job. Sure, they love what they do. Sure, they love the people. But do they feel fulfilled on the job? Do they see themselves as contributors not only to the business but to the greater good? Do they go to bed at night saying, "What a great day of accomplishments! I love my life. I can't wait until tomorrow to do more of the same."

Now, some interviewers might say that answering the second question, Will you love the job?, is sufficient to gain insight into my proposed fourth question. I disagree. Many people have told me they love their job but long to do something more important, something that they have to find outside of work because it doesn't exist at their job. In other words, they would answer yes to all three questions but no to my fourth one. Those first three questions provide great insights into short-term matters; the fourth question lifts a window of understanding into long-term, career-related issues. Will you love the job? is a question of passion, but Can you live with yourself by working with us? is a question of commitment. Passion can be short-lived, but not commitment.

As I have helped many people with their resumes and cover letters throughout the past 35 years, I have insisted that they show more than accomplishment. They must show commitment. Employers are short-sighted if they aren't looking for the same.

Lipogram: What's Unusual About This Post?

A big plus of working on writing with adults is that I pick up as much wisdom as I impart. But kids can also pass on a thing or two to instructors. Ishika Jain, a primary school pupil, is a grand illustration of such a child. 

Ishika's mom, who was in my grammar class from this Monday to Thursday, said that Ishika was taught in school about lipograms and a book Gadsby by an author who did craft such an opus in lipogram fashion,  amazingly laying down 50,000 words without using a particular symbol. I will not say what that symbol is, as I am trying my hand at a lipogram in this post. Can you spot which symbol I am trying so hard not apply to all four paragraphs? 

You might rightly ask, "Why would a man or woman want to do such a thing?" I can think of two motivations: First, authors do such things simply for fun. Also, writing this post did assign many a difficulty, as I constantly had to twist my thinking and look up optional words just to avoid including that symbol. I gladly will try such a task as a way of boosting my productivity. This post is not as long as Gadsby, but a 250-word composition is not bad for a first (and last) try.

I did not know about lipograms or that book; thus, I can truly say that Ishika has taught yours truly. So a big thanks to you, Ishika!