When theory Meets Practice: How to speak to anyone?

There are two kinds of people in this life:

Those who walk into a room and say,

"Well, here I am!"

And those who walk in and say,

"Ahh, There you are."

                                                                            :-Leil Lowndes (1999)

When I walked into Impact Africa offices at Mombasa road in the afternoon, I was confident. Fully prepared to impress and walk back proudly with at least a promise of consideration, or in the least a referral to some equally successful Public relations firm.

You see, I just completed the second chapter of Leil Lowndes’ How to Talk to Anyone, published by McGraw-Hill  and as it were, I was to dare putting theory into practice. Lowndes methodically starts the first part with what most would agree is the most basic, yet immensely communicative non-verbal cue into a conversation; the smile.

I would never have forgotten how to make your smile magically different, or the ever so practical, how to strike everyone as intelligent and insightful using your eyes. Or I could have skipped to the second part where she majors on how to know what to say after you say “hi”; the intrigues of small talk and the trick to never wondering “what do I say next?”

Now that you know how much wisdom I was armed with, I should remind you why you had to do that same Chemistry experiment several times in the lab after only one overview of the procedure in the classroom. There’s a huge rift between theory and application; in fact after my experience today I think it may be even wider than most people are aware or care to find out.

Elevator door opens, enter fourth floor, Somak House. Right in front of the wide open elevator door is the entrance to Impact Africa. I must say that I did suspect the gentleman who had left the lift before me, had pressed some button that made it strangely accelerate, the ascend was too fast. The two were only divorced by a thin hallway that the entrances mapped strictly into each other. There was no point in delaying, I fumbled.

Whoever approved the open office plan must have been sent by the very goddess of intimidation. As I fought with the elevator door I could see most of the employees busy on their workstations. When I covered the distance between the elevator (which had now abandoned me to chauffeur some other somebody) and the entrance, and stood momentarily at the door, they suddenly looked up (I might have imagined that too!).

That’s the moment I realized the “why” stories of the tortoise cracking its shell were mere folklore of a people who had not a hint at a scientific explanation of their environment or their existence. Even more relevant I realized the likes Leil Lowndes’ “How” manuals to whatever social phenomenon that exists, are just chunks of texts that plainly massage our emotional deficiencies. At that moment, It was just that; a manual!

That said, I was to meet who checked out literally every item on Lowndes' communication checklist. I sauntered to her direction and managed to mutter what was left of sub-conscious ‘how to speak to anyone’ script.  

At this point I must say I couldn't tell which of the two kinds of people Lowndes outlines I was. Maybe there's a third one who says "Hell, Where am I?"

This lady, Vallerie, in the brief moment that I got to engage with her, did know how to make someone feel like an old friend at once, knew perfectly how to resuscitate a dying conversation, scored A’s on that magically different smile test and I could say she could make “Where are you from?” sound exciting.

When I walked out, the elevator had just come to my aid and I hopped in literally assuming that it knew I was headed for the ground floor.  I couldn’t help but compare the amiable reception at Impact Africa to the hostility that I have been treated with elsewhere. Like this annoying lady receptionist at a government bureau with a pseudo-aura of a chief executive, donning a third-tier Eastleigh suit and some Murang’a Road hells, who wouldn’t let me past the lobby like her name was on the door. Then I realized I hadn't pressed the ground floor button when some wiry old executive sent us to six floors above.

I am really having trouble understanding the psychology of the typical receptionist. I bet Lowndes’ How to sound smarter than you are, would suffice as an enduring fix to this grossly unchecked, and exasperating miscommunication.

Leading in the Misinformation age

Victor Kiam once said that information is a negotiators greatest weapon. Then, Thomas Jefferson acknowledged that it is indeed the currency of democracy. Hunter Grass was quoted to have wit-fully affirmed that information networks literally straddle the world. But, it’s Ronald Reagan who crowned it all when he gazetted it the oxygen of the modern world.

I should naturally follow this with the declaration made decades ago, that we live in the 'information age'. True, it is the world of personal digital assistants, portable newspapers and virtual friends. While the libraries of yester-years prided themselves as being one-stop hubs of knowledge now they are just one among a list of secondary sources in a research methods handout.

It’s about celebrity mania, the trending, and the elusive fashionable, instant unrestricted file sharing and mass self-communication. A world where grammar is tortured everyday even by the very custodians ever so unwittingly that listing the comma splice as sloppy punctuation would be hardly grasped.

It’s a bare fact that access to information has exceeded even the wildest expectations of Gutenberg when he invented the printing press. Knowledge had been the preserve of the clergy and aristocrats, every other subject had to take their interpretation as truth. As such these ‘informed’ few would do as they pleased riding effortlessly on the ignorance of the majority. In fact, it is this very monopoly over information that made the church a monstrosity of an institution commanding sheer submissiveness for several centuries.

Current governments have tried to replicate the church’s methods but they have been abortive with democracy and ‘new media’.

So, with this backdrop you’d say that decisions that we make are more judicious and undoubtedly leading to the well-being of the individual.  But as we well might know, this is hardly the case. In fact, with all this arguably ubiquitous information flow, our choices are plummeting westwards, lost in the whirlwind of real-time communication. The reason is not the availability, it’s not even apathy. It lays solely in paying attention to the wrong information, or rather the wrong sources.

Lazarsfeld and Katz in the 40s suggested that information flows in a two-step process, first from the source (in their case the media), to opinion leaders. The second step is from the opinion leaders to the masses. Now, those with most access to media and having more literate understanding of media content, naturally become the opinion leaders consequently becoming the sources and diffusing their (mis)understating.

Not forgetting that raucous woman who sports the same headdress at every chief baraza, she has managed to head the local maendeleo ya wanawake for years. Her kind, pride in accumulating adversaries at the grassroots, since it has become an associated characteristic of achievement.

While their study was based on mediated information it provides in the retrospect, a plausible explanation of the consistent wrong use of information that the ‘developing’ world has been grappling with.

Every single village has that stout bearded man or that occasional bald-head with an unflattering moustache and is very sure to have a couple of pot-bellied grey-haired bimbos whose rudimentary baby-fat is pityingly mistaken for a sign of wealth, health or even insight. 

These are level one opinion leaders, it’s largely more than just media messages they are explaining and diffusing but rather all kinds of information that trickles down from government and all. Once they have taken a stand, local watering-holes and other informal places get abuzz. Am not suggesting a magic bullet here but the reality is that they hold considerable sway despite the information being available to all it’s the few who pay attention, know where to find and better still, know how to use it that thrive.

The urban or ‘educated’ or ‘informed’ fellow would view this as a scene lifted from some remote village. The tragedy is that the very opinion leaders impact the choices that the ‘educated’ (am tempted to add the suffix idiot) makes only that this time they wear different headdresses, have trimmed hair, rare pot-bellies and have refined English, occasional Italian suits, dine respectably and have some penchant oblique duplicity.

Even when this informed fellow eludes these two classes of opinion leaders, his greatest undoing will still rest in paying attention to the wrong information and passionately following the rugged, beaten path of mediocrity that I’d call masked ignorance. 

A communication skills lecture I had in my junior year proves perfect elucidation for this fellow’s condition. Its noise, that’s what you are paying attention to when all those opportunities fly past you (that is if you even noticed they did.)

PS did you see that comma splice?

Disambiguating Motherhood; Why it is earned.

When I googled the word Mother this evening I expected to find at least a couple of pages, of the over two thousand results that came up, dedicated to the time-honoured meaning that we might have all experienced. Guess I have really been believing that google knows everything. 

But, maybe because google had a mother someday the first two searches revealed a natural understanding of the term. The rest of the links in the first page are… (you guessed it …) Businesses, you will be surprised by the number of businesses that bear the name mother; restaurants, advertising agencies, magazines, fashion, graphic designs; all very successful. Well, as much as I would love to chew google out for giving such little space for unmistakably the most fertile expression ever a very large number of small businesses down to every township have an almost default prefix ‘Mama__’ so and so salon, beverages, pub, designs and my personal favorite Mama_Mboga.

I must say I’m quite surprised to realize that ‘mama’ is not underlined… since when did it become English!! So I google it, and what comes up? A movie! This google today is quite unpredictable, so I refine the search and now it’s brings up an even more unanticipated definition, simply put as “daimmmmm! She is one hot mama!!” now I can’t tell if it’s English or something… some idiot (a compliment) in a WhatsApp group am in would say #peace! (I’ve never really known the motivation behind such wanton misuse of the word)

So I go back and type some variation that google was so kind to hit at me in my first search; ‘mom’. Am hopeful this time, but the search engine relentlessly disappoints, the first link is a certain ‘Ministry of Manpower!’ then several several links to a TV serial fill up the first page. At this juncture I am confident that google is anything but a mother. It might be the mother of all web searches but it has the mindset of a medieval African father who only sees the amount of dowry and anticipates perpetual respect to accrue from in-laws rather than think of his daughters’ well-being and freedom of choice.

So I went all manual, picked up oxford dictionary which staunchly tells ‘a female parent of a child or animal’ echoing only the natural inherent sense. Still infatuated with the scroll fell of the web I check the words that follow. And she doesn’t disappoint, we have mother-country, motherhood, motherland, motherlode, mother-nature, mother-tongue and the main circuit board of each and every single electronic device – the Motherboard! All these very loaded terms whose chi is undeniably ubiquitous.

I’d call my dictionary motherly, you will agree with me it’s quite principled, unrelenting in presenting fact as it knows best and very consistent in its intentions. Whoever seeks its help will be served the exact information the former received. It has no bias and as you well know it doesn’t pop-up adverts to your face or redirect to a company’s website or a TV serial you should watch! Now that’s a mother: no hidden agenda’s no bias, stereotypes or favorites (But she will tell you what all these selfish terms mean)

The mother am not talking about is the modern-day female who prefers lady to woman and became the dictionary’s definition of mother in all other places than a matrimonial bed, or worse is still hoping the child remains innocent and never gives her the laborious task of manufacturing a father or even deciding herself who it really was! (Trust me, there are such). I find it hard, to really call ‘mother’ alumnus of what Mukere calls Modern dating school who smitten by the promise of ‘unlimited freedom’ drown into an avalanche of flings that end up in unsightly baby bums and a certified disenchanted future. 

Definitely it’s not that ‘lady’ who had the gall to contemplate abortion but couldn’t because she’d miss clubbing so much if it was to go wrong, or because her parents wouldn’t hear of it. Not to mention the growing number of extraterrestrial women who would without warning can chop off a man’s manhood if and when they think the burden of motherhood is too heavy

The motherlode of our very existence is lies in the presence of exceptional women who have mostly by design, but also by accident, perfected the art of mothering. Oxford says ‘the act of caring for and protecting children or other people' this we could say transcends both genders (funny). 

My mama mboga is one ideal make-up of a mother, she is a provider and goes lengths to make sure her family is fed. Despite the heavy responsibility she will treat her customers (mostly campus students and broke bachelors) with respect and care to the extent of extending credit to them even after enduring repetitive chopping of the Sukuma Wiki (the hardest and most monotonous Kitchen work I know). 

The other day as I ran back home from my new job; tarmacking, in the middle of a downpour I found her standing in the rain clad in a makeshift polythene raincoat, the run-off water  had long swept away the stone she sits on. She knew her customer’s weren’t home yet. The mboga was cut already so I bought my usual, she even offered to add a little.

I wanted to tell her to go home, that it wasn’t worth it if she got sick, but I ended up telling her that she should mind the cold. She did this not for herself, that’s who a mother is. she does cry sometimes, but she will dry her tear's so quickly before her children sees them; their pillar.

It’s a title, as such it is earned.

Who are you?

I’m back people… and yes! You are right to think I am terribly rusty… after braving baptism by fire courtesy of some professional examiner, I have had this conviction to steer clear of any form of evaluation. 

Now, of all the goings-on there have been in the last few weeks, since I so delightedly exited the formal miseducation system, one event has sought to re-educate me on the inescapable reality that being subjected to judgement is an integral part of life. 

It made me realize that every day you wake up, close the door behind you and step into the world you are like that candidate sitting for an exam. You have no idea what kind of questions are waiting for you. Worse, even you can’t be really sure about the kind of responses the examiner would deem appropriate. How you dress, walk, speak and even eat! is under scrutiny by somebody whether consciously or subconsciously and is the basis with which people form an opinion about you. Whatever explaining you have about whatever you do, or who you are is quite secondary.

So like any other enthusiastic job seeker I started sending application letters to virtually any employer who is even remotely related to my industry. It’s interesting how certain things gain so much importance when they suddenly seem to offer a chance at solving your immediate problems. A few months ago I would have casually commented on how sites like brightermonday have become so popular with job seekers and most probably laughed off the idea. Today, I have subscribed to job feeds from several such sites and I have never been more punctual at checking my mail (in fact I have to refresh to make sure feeds are up to date).

Then came my very first invitation for an interview, quite unexpected and the hirer, a leading media company with promise of profound industry experience. I was excited and thankful (I had just beaten the wizard of tarmacking at her game, or so I thought). I did dress quite well on the material day that myself, I was surprised, all bespoke and sharp.

It’s the first question that I have been re-answering for a while now. ‘Tell us about yourself?’ Pretty simple and straightforward. A ready answer should be forthcoming even if you were to be woken in the middle of a dream. Funny enough, this was the hardest question I had to answer. I was prepared for all manner of questions related to the job offer, current affairs and the entire industry, even forecasts, but this one, didn’t cross my mind.

I considered several options; my skills, ambitions, passion, religion, education, strengths, weaknesses and pretty much what you can think of in the few seconds between the interviewer’s pause and your answering. Having no precedent to borrow from I just let words flow and gave the very response any Kamau, Njoroge or Kinuthia would think of; A short autobiography of me. It was over as fast as I had started. Frankly, I cant exactly remember how I described myself that day. 

Now after doing some bit of ‘research’ I realize how I massively undersold myself; apparently according to ‘experienced’ recruiters its being given an easy way into convincing the panel you are the right man for the job. Instead of pulling a classical autobiography they say I should have listed my achievements and any characteristic that aligns me with the job opening at hand.

That in mind, I’d say getting a solid definition of oneself is quite an elusive endeavor; the understanding of the self is more evolutionary and dynamic than we would want to acknowledge. Circumstances that we encounter every other day and experiences we have constructively create a new self in us that more often we discover at a future date. That may explain situations where people around us realize changes in our personality way before we become conscious of them. Some people have we say are living in denial (like some MP told Ruto) pointing at the possibility of them appreciating their apparent self rather than the real. But this then tends to suggest rather strongly that there is a yardstick against which to evaluate what someone is supposed to be.

So what really defines us? Is it our skills, competencies, aspirations, religion, friends we hang out with or places we hang out, education, talents, temperaments, of is it height? Tell me what is that perfect definition of self that would capture the whole essence of who you are, yet delivered in briefest sentence possible?

Obviously, you might have realized that I didn’t quite get the job. To this I’d like to think of myself of being too good for the job – as you well might know the flip side of it, is a thought inconceivable. It’s walking out of an interview knowing that the employer would have been lucky to have you.

 

So I’ve been considering this cliché mainstream mis-educators have been flaunting all over about churning ‘job-creators’ rather that ‘-seeker’ and soon I might be giving Mwaniki a call. He’s the one person I know who can get a buyer for anything that is up for sale and I realize pretty much anything is a potential sale given the right persuasion; even that phone you are holding!

Give this a try: Describe yourself in one sentence (149 characters!)