Productive Networking: How to Talk About Yourself In a Networking Conversation

By: Pete Machalek Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

I talk a lot about networking.

Most of what I say is an attempt to convince people that networking isn’t selling, it isn’t about talking about yourself, it’s about building relationships. And the way to do that is to help people.

Tell your story when you're networking.

So when you network, you have to remember that the conversations you lead shouldn’t be about you, they should be about them, the people you’re talking to, the people you’re there to help. (For the full run-down about this, check out my post here.)

Because helping achieves your goal of building a relationship with them. When you help them, they want a relationship with you. End of story.

Almost.

There are two circumstances where you’re going to want to be able to talk about yourself effectively:

  1. After you’ve completed your mission of leading a conversation with the other person about them and you’ve gotten clear on how you can help them, they will often turn things around and ask about you.
  2. When the other person “beats you to the punch” and starts a conversation with you about you before you can start one about them. It can be an act of grace to let them ask about you.

In both of these circumstances, you’re going to want to make the most of the opportunity. You’ve got a person authentically interested in hearing about how they can help you.

It’s a fantastic opportunity that we too often blow by showing up unprepared. We don’t know what to say about ourselves that will get them thinking along the lines of something that could help us, so in the absence of anything prepared, we just share stuff about ourselves that occurs to us. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing — I mean, people are learning about us, and they’re feeling connected to us if we talk about ourselves.

But you can double the potential value of the conversation by showing up to this opportunity prepared and communicating something meaningful about yourself that will show them how they can help you while at the same time avoiding the possibility of looking like someone who needs help.

There are really only three parts to prepare.

First, you’re going to want to introduce yourself — name, company name, and elevator pitch. (See my post about “How To Talk About Your Business” to understand the difference between talking about yourself and talking about your company.) Something like this:

My name is Pete Machalek, and I’m with SagePresence. Businesses bring us in when they want to build business, and they want to do it using their own people. We work with team members to build professional relationships, and to help them present their company’s core value with confidence and influence. So, by the time we’re done, everyone on the team has the ability to be an ambassador for the organization and build business everywhere they go.

Or, if you’re currently not representing an organization, you can deliver your own elevator pitch like so:

My name is Jane Smith, and I’m a project manager. Medium-sized tech companies bring me in when they have complex projects that are facing a deadline. I get things organized and stay on top of them so that everything gets done right and on time, and the deadlines are satisfied.

This information gets them clear about who you are and the value that you and/or your business represents. Don’t feel the pressure to deliver it like an elevator pitch (despite the fact that I called it that a couple paragraphs ago). Think about it as a few bits of info to get out there over the course of a couple back and forths.

Next, you’re going to want to tell them something about what’s going on for you right now that’s less than ideal. In our terminology, you’re going to want to tell them your current Not-So-Happy Beginning.

The NSHB doesn’t have to be tragic and awful — In fact it’s best if it’s not too dramatic. You don’t want to turn people off by telling them that you got fired and you haven’t worked a day in three years, and you’re really at the end of your rope.

But you do need to communicate some sort of lack or void, because the other person is listening for how they can help you. And if all they hear is that everything is absolutely fantastic and getting better all the time, they won’t get a sense of what they could possibly do for you.

You need a good, healthy middle-of-the-road statement that communicates a basic stability with something meaningful missing. Something like:

We’re just coming off of the best year we’ve ever had and this year is on track to be at least as good, but it seems like most of our clients want to schedule us at the last minute. So at the beginning of the year like this, it’s easy to look at the whole calendar year and see more space than we want.

 Or, back to the unemployed scenario:

I’m keeping busy, but I’m underemployed right now. My best skills simply aren’t being challenged as much as I want them to be.

Does this seem negative to you? GOOD! It should! There is a place for negative, and it’s the BEGINNING of the story you’re telling. We’re all worried about sounding too negative. It’s an appropriate worry, but it gets taken care of by what comes next.

What’s next — and final — is, you’re going to want to tell them about your Happy Ending — the situation that you’re working toward, that contrasts nicely with your NSHB.  Something they can help you achieve.

What we want is to be able to look at the whole calendar year and feel he security that comes with a jam-packed schedule, filled at the beginning of the year.

Or:

What I really want is to be challenged by an organization that really needs my help.

So where does that bring us to in the conversation? Well… you tell me. Here’s the Pete Machalek story I’ve been building so far (and every word of it’s true, so be honest about your response):

My name is Pete Machalek, and I’m with SagePresence. Businesses bring us in when they want to build business, and they want to do it using their own people. We work with team members to build professional relationships, and to help them present their company’s core value with confidence and influence. So, by the time we’re done, everyone on the team has the ability to be an ambassador for the organization and build business everywhere they go.

We’re just coming off of the best year we’ve ever had and this year is on track to be at least as good, but it seems like most of our clients want to schedule us at the last minute. So at the beginning of the year like this, it’s easy to look at the whole calendar year and see more space than we want.

What we want is to be able to look at the whole calendar year and feel he security that comes with a jam-packed schedule, filled at the beginning of the year.

So, back to my question. Where does this story lead you as the person on the receiving end of it? What questions do you have for me? What thoughts are in your head?

And now let’s try Jane Smith’s unemployed story:

My name is Jane Smith, and I’m a project manager. Medium-sized tech companies bring me in when they have complex projects that are facing a deadline. I get things organized and stay on top of them so that everything gets done right and on time, and their deadlines are satisfied.

I’m keeping busy, but I’m underemployed right now. My best skills simply aren’t being challenged as much as I want them to be.

What I really want is to be challenged by an organization that really needs my help.

So how about now? What thoughts are in your head, and what questions do you have for Jane?

In both cases, I think you’re going to be thinking about what organizations can make a difference for this person? and who do I know who can help?

So this is what you’re going to want to do. Identify your own Not-So-Happy Beginning and your Happy Ending so that people who want to help can get a sense of how they can help.

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FROM VULNERABILITY TO POSSIBILITY: Communication Advice to Grow Opportunity

By: Dean Hyers Tagged With: , , , ,

It’s a bottom line world, but there are other lines worth looking at.

I want to speak to some of the really impressive wins I see that don’t have to do with winning, at least not directly.

The power of possibility lives in both our strength and our vulnerability. Our communication advice is to nurture the fragile voices and communicate to preserve an opportunity for ideas to be heard.

In the cracks of the big opportunities your organization’s representative face are all the day-in, day-out interactions that make up the fabric of your organization. They may not directly and obviously contribute to the bottom line, but each one can, down the road, lead to success or failure for the entire organization.

This post is about the little ideas that get shot down before they have their chance in the sunlight, and the smaller voices drowned out by the crescendo of aggressive competition and assertive energy.

These things happen largely for reasons related to communication. There’s always a voice with more communication skills, and another with less ability to articulate a perspective. But articulation is a rubber yardstick in the measurement of an idea’s potential, relative at best in an unequal playing field.

A good communicator (leader or team member) needs to do two things simultaneously:

  1. Continually develop the skills of articulation and presence, for their own articulation going out.
  2. Use their communication skills to rise above communication itself and seek the meaning behind other people’s imperfect articulation. (That’s how you level the playing field.)

Not all ideas are articulated equal. Not all professionals can articulate equally. You want to build communication skills while remembering that value lies only in the meaning which delivery is an attempt to transfer.

When I work in companies, I’m going for the win, but all around me I see other potentials. So I operate in a dualistic mindset. On the one hand I stick to the  mission, staying on task to justify my price. I never stray from the task at hand. For me, that usually means maximizing the star performers. I think of this focus as the melody.

On the other hand, I treat all potentials as equal, and never stop looking and listening for the quieter voice, the one holding back, and the forces at work that might be keeping them from standing up and being counted. For me, that usually means ignoring the star performers and focusing on the smaller players. I think of this focus as the harmony.

Is this landing to you as a contradiction? Well it should. It is a dualistic mindset, as both melody and harmony are important in the chorus of your business. Ten years in business as an owner, and ten years in businesses as a coach and consultant, I’ve seen clearly that melody gets far more attention than harmony. If it’s not cut and dry, it’s cut out and left to dry.

It seems to me as I look back at both my career and my life, I’ve been the protector of everything and everyone vulnerable – a shepherd of the delicate moments in my businesses and creative ventures. Somebody had to be in the circles I’ve walked, otherwise great potentials – both people and ideas – would never have gotten to shine. Fastest isn’t always best. Strongest isn’t always right. Most persuasive may not be better than least.

I realized only recently that that is the role I play in the room. Any room. Every day of my life. I am a bodyguard to the fragile idea, and to the weaker articulation that could be worthy of strengthening, not to mention the people themselves, who may be well worth it, but whose legs aren’t yet strong enough to stand on their own.

In that spirit I’ve saved a thousand lives – the lives of good ideas nobody was hearing, the career lives of those still working their way out of the cocoon, and the work lives of leaders, or would-be leaders, who need someone’s permission to consider that they should stand up, and that maybe someone would listen to them.

I’ve recently discovered that I’m not as alone in this undercover occupation as I thought I was. Of course Pete Machalek and I have been a dynamic duo together in this vigilante fight for the unheard voices. But there are others. Many of them are leaders who nobody recognizes as leaders at all. Unnoticed, they are the “one for all,” to whom nobody is their “all for one.” I always look for that person when I go to a new business to build their speaking skills.

Then there are the more visible, more recognized leaders. Julie Gilbert of Wolf Means Business is a visible protector of the vulnerable. She built an entire business around harnessing the power of under-recognized voices – most notably those of professional women. And for her contributions to a better future with respect to business culture, some people miss the point, seeing that it’s “nice” to focus on professional women, but missing the idea it’s driven not by altruism, but by an unwillingness to sit and let great potential go to waste, when one crop could double its yield by tapping more fully its very own resources – the ones right in front, on the payroll!

This is what I’m asking you to consider being in your work environment. Be the one who can stand strong enough to stay on mission, while keeping a watchful eye on the vulnerable people and possibilities on the periphery of that mission.

Right now, most working environments are flowerbeds of potential, with huge feet clumsily stomping on opportunities and resources they don’t recognize as having value. The clumsy feet are the classic business virtues of strength and competition, which have their place but are incomplete on their own, and all too often damage anything vulnerable.

I’m going to explore this topic further in two more posts, including specific examples of what I’m talking about when I say, “protecting the vulnerable possibilities and fragile voices.” And I’m going to explore how that plays out in the daily world, but I want to explore it with you, not at you. This isn’t our usual SagePresence blog topic. What does it mean to you? What does it say?

Share with me your thoughts on this so that we can pull  the subject into focus  after we’ve heard something from you. Please comment below.

6 interesting opinions, add yours

Effective Communication for Leaders Doing Performance Reviews

By: Dean Hyers Tagged With: , , ,

“This is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you!”

Leaders dread giving tough reviews about as much as the report dreads getting them. We just coached a high-level exec who I’d describe as firm, fair and firm. Oh, and direct. Tough as she was, she was tied up in knots over a negative review she had to give that very day.

“I know what I have to say, I just don’t know how to say it,” she said, clearly not wanting to dash the person’s hopes or damage them in the process of being honest. “I’ve been told I can bring a negative energy that makes things like this worse.”

effective communication for leaders

Effective communication for leaders: Positive emotion helps performance reviews. Appreciation can shift fear toward excitement, and the relational questioning can shift attention and reduce the heat.

We looked at this challenge on two levels. How do you approach a performance review, and what exactly is negative energy, so you can avoid it?

We identified four things to know about negative energy:

  1. Negative Energy is emotional energy,  typically anger.
  2. When Negative Energy is directed at people triggers either fear, sadness or anger in response.
  3. Negative Energy converts excitement into fear.
  4. Negative Energy shifts the recipient’s attention onto themselves, triggering self-protective instincts.

Then we looked at reversing the polarity of emotional energy toward effective leadership communication: If you want to deliver positive energy, you need to broadcast positive emotions, shift fear toward excitement, and keep people’s attention on the challenge at hand.

These are not particularly hard things to do. But you need to understand a few things. Our training organizes all of the seemingly infinite range of human emotions into Happy, Sad, and Mad. Separate from emotions is “performance-pressure energy,” and that energy is either called excitement or fear, depending how an individual responds to this energy.

Lead and Follow Any Negative Critique With Positive Emotion: If you can bring some level of happiness to any situation, you can bring a positive charge to it. Happy comes in many forms: You can be pleased, appreciative, interested, glad, thrilled, impressed, hopeful, encouraging, or in anticipation of something good to come. Find something positive to start on. And find something positive to end on.

In the middle of the positive, you can go to the harder places you have to go, and feel however they feel. Our client appreciated the person, then was notably frustrated with them in an area needing significant improvement. Then, appreciating them at the end, the report handled the criticism well.

Affirm (being positive/happy about something), deliver the criticisms (however that feels), and end on affirmation (and a return to being positive/happy about something).

Shift Fear Toward Excitement: Appreciation is a flavor of “happy” that is positive, and carries inherent care, respect, concern, empathy, and nurturing. When you appreciate someone, they feel safe. More importantly for leaders, appreciation converts fear to excitement.

When people feel good about something — anything — during a pressure moment, they report that they are excited. When they feel bad and have this energy, it’s fear. I believe that the energy is specifically a performance energy – it relates to something we have to live up to, and it will either scare them, or it will motivate them.

Leaders play a major role in determining how that energy will be interpreted by the person they’re reviewing. Appreciate them, and you will foster excitement in them. You can even say things to guide them to appreciate themselves. “It’s true you haven’t hit all your milestones, but you should really be proud about the ones you did achieve.”

Relocate Reviewee Attention Off Themselves: We’ve studied fear quite a lot, working with people who have stage fright about speaking, negotiating, networking, crucial conversations, voicing an opinion in a meeting, and delivering bad news. Fear always has the effect of moving your attention inward on yourself. Confidence is outwardly focused. Confident people, like high performers, aren’t focused on themselves. They focus on the challenge, the team, the place they’re trying to get, the mission, the vision, or the person they’re talking to.

Spot the connection. Performance reviews inherently make the reviewee focus on themselves. That creates fear out of excitement. We talked about this with our client, and she said, “Come to think about it, I get reviewed too, and I just got nervous thinking about mine, which isn’t for ten months.” Reviews put people in the wrong mindset, converting passion into dread.

There’s a great thing you can do to shift that, and it comes in our language. If we can talk in a way that shifts the focus outward, you can guide your report out of their fear as you review them. Here are some examples of attention-shifting questions:

  • “Let’s take a moment to jog our memory about a year ago. What was our team facing and how were we positioning our goals for you to address the team’s challenge?”
  • “What was going on in the relationship with you and the other two in your project team that inspired this communication goal?”
  • “If you look at our needs as a company, and as a department, what mile markers for your progress make sense to focus on for this coming year?”
  • “Here’s a goal that didn’t get met, and it’s an ongoing issue. Let’s look at it from the perspective of the people who report to you. How does it effect them and how does it impact the mission?”

This kind of questioning has a shift of attention built into it. On their own, the reviewee is going to internalize everything, and take it personally. These statements are still on-task with the review content, but they shift the attention outward, looking at the reviewee in relation to something, instead of the reviewee as an island entity. Try to shift focus from individual to relational thinking, and you can reduce the natural tendency toward self-focus.

IN REVIEW: Three things make reviews go better: 1) Lead and follow negative critique with positive emotion, which serves as a positive tone-setter to deliver criticism constructively. 2) Shift emotion from fear to excitement by appreciating the report, and by encouraging them to appreciate aspects of themselves. 3) Redirect attention off of the individual with relational dialogue, helping them avoid self-focus to see the interconnected picture.

And a hint: You can lead the person who’s reviewing you by taking these same things on for yourself, sandwiching negative stuff inside positive emotion, appreciating your reviewer, and speaking from the relational vantage to keep your own attention on the challenge, the need, the company, and how your actions and progress interweave with the mission and the team!

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Relationship Nurturing: What To Do After Getting Their Business Card

By: Pete Machalek Tagged With: , , ,

[A quick pre-post note: Normally Dean and I post on everything that influences your presence in make-or-break moments. This time, I'm posting on a more technical aspect of communicating and building relationships, partially because several people have asked for this information recently, and partially because I've come to see this as something of a drive of your presence in networking conversations: Knowing how you're going to follow up is going to help you present yourself powerfully and confidently in the original conversation. Read on and let me know what you think.]

How to follow up after getting their business card

Their business card is your ticket to driving a mutually valuable relationship

You’ve done your networking job right. You’re back from the event with a pocket full of business cards. Now what? You don’t want to let them just sit and get stale, but it’s daunting to reach out and call each one of them. You want to nurture the relationships, but there are only so many hours in the day, and you can’t spend all of them in one-on-one conversations with everyone you meet.

There are some networking experts out there who suggest you restrict your potential relationships inside of your target markets to maximize your efficiency, exactly because of the finite number of hours in a day.

I do agree that, when you pick where you go to network with a big room of people, you should choose those events that will be best populated with people who fit into your target markets.

But I also believe that, no matter what your target markets are, you should treat everyone you meet as a good person to network with. Because everyone knows people, who know additional people. And everyone you win over might provide access to this network of people that they know.

But how do you win someone over that well? By planting yourself into their brains as a source of value, or potential value, to them. If your networking conversation went the way we suggest, you’ve already begun that process, by leading conversations not necessarily about yourself, but about them – finding out who they are, what their current challenges are, and what their goals are. Then thinking about how you or someone you know can get them from where they are now to where they say they want to be, or at least closer to that place.

Even if you can’t directly help or immediately connect them to someone who can help, you’re still succeeding with them because you’re planting yourself in their minds as someone who wants to help, and someone who potentially can help in the future by keeping your eyes open for people who can help them.

So, after each conversation, take notes about how this person wants to be helped. If you can help them by connecting them to someone they know they want to be connected with, make that connection.

Then, send them a message like this:

I really enjoyed our conversation at [location]. I’m happy to keep an eye out for [people you’re looking for] for you. In the meantime, to make it easier to keep in touch, I’m adding you to my contact list, which means you’re going to start receiving occasional messages from me. If these touch-bases ever become unwelcome, feel free to let me know, but in the meantime, please keep me up to date on who and what you’re looking for so I can continue to keep an eye out for you.

This will set the table for you to start sending them, and everyone on your contact list, occasional messages that share your expertise. It really doesn’t matter what you’re an expert in. If you network, you’re looking to help someone, and you’re looking to help them with some kind of expertise.

  • Write about who you help and how you help them.
  • Write about past success stories.
  • Write about nuggets of value that you find as you continue to build your expertise.

Share this expertise with the people on your list. If they can’t directly benefit from it, they might know someone who can, and they’ll indirectly benefit from sharing it with those people.

So if you don’t already have a CRM system that allows you to mass email your contacts, you’re going to want to get one. I recommend two excellent resources that specialize in helping subject-matter experts share their expertise, called SendPepper and OfficeAutoPilot.

And if you’re going to write these messages, you might as well put them online in a permanent place, like a blog. WordPress is an excellent place to go to start, and if you really want to get it set up to work for your precise needs, you’ll want to talk to Robert Dempsey, a friend and resource who has put together a remarkable program about blogging.

Regardless of what you write, be a source of value to your contacts, and you’ll never have a question about how to follow up with people that you meet. Learn about them and about what they need and want so that you can be a catalyst toward those ends. Plant yourself in the minds of everyone on your list as a source of value to them.

And continue to be that source of value by being the expert you are. Give your expertise away. Share what you know, and they’ll value hearing from you. They’ll want to have that relationship with you, because people want to have on to sources of value to them. And the more that you are perceived as a source of value, the better you will do.

10 interesting opinions, add yours

Business Communication Strategies From A Dog Trainer

By: Dean Hyers Tagged With: , , , ,

Does your body language add calm, or escalate drama? Are you one of those people who can just come out and say something controversial without creating a problem, or have you already made it worse before you’ve even started talking. Your body language is speaking volumes, and good or bad, your presence really sets the stage.

I didn’t fully grasp what my body was saying to people around me, until I took my dog to obedience school and discovered what I was saying that made things worse.

Business Communication Strategies

Business communication strategies need to incorporate calm body language, so you relax tension during delicate subjects.

It all started when I got this dog named Max, last Saturday. He’s an Australian Blue Heeler, which is a herding dog, the same kind of dog Mad Max had in Road Warrior. He’s strong, a herder and a hunter, and Max doesn’t seem to understand why we have “animals” running around loose in our house! Of course he’s not thinking of himself, but the cat and guinea pig. They are clearly just animals (especially the rodent), invaders to our den, and clearly not “of the pack.”

Unfortunately there is nothing in Max’s wiring that would lead him to question that which is obvious to him – he must herd these animals out of the domain of the pack, or simply kill them.

My business insight began when I noticed how much worse the dog got as I tried to calm him down and teach him not to attack my other pets. The more I tried to control the dog, the worse it got. Max went from intense interest to a bloodthirsty commitment.

A very strong and determined animal, Max pulled double whatever I could muster to hold him back. Once he pulled the leash through my fingers and lunged at the cat with snarling teeth and a ferocious bark. I tackled the dog, putting him in a full nelson held-lock. As I held back this creature of muscle and teeth, I saw the cat’s fur blow under in the angry wind of Max’s breath, just before she scratched and bit my wife Kim in the process of making her escape.

Later that day I found Angela Strong, a tough cookie of a dog trainer doing some coaching at PetSmart. Angela is pretty, slender with long dark hair, half my size, and double my confidence. Her handshake hurt my fingers, and I’d bet you an honest fifty that she drives a jeep wrangler.

She watched me struggle to hold back the dog, and serendipitously, one of those crazy pet owners who actually walks his cat on a leash, happened into view. Max had dragged me half way across the pet store for a little cat nip before Angela gestured to say, “Let me show you how it’s done.” I was thinking, “Have at it, little lady.”

It wasn’t two minutes before she was walking Max right up to and around that cat. They were calm, Max trotting alongside her, obediently minding his manners while she talked to the cat owner about feline leash training. She was holding Max’s leash with only two fingers and there was enough slack that he could have easily snatched up that furry little cat-snack. But he didn’t.

“Your body language is escalating him,” she said upon returning, and I’m wondering if she somehow swapped dogs without me noticing. “You’re telling him there’s a problem, and I’m telling him that everything is just the way it’s supposed to be.”

She explained that Max was picking up all the little cues that gave away my tension on the matter of the cat entering the room. “He feels your hand tense up through the chain. He sees your posture stiffen. If you draw up the slack on the leash, or set your hand on him, he’ll notice. If your standing, he’ll feel your leg stiffen. He’ll spot changes in expression, head position, and voice tone. You want him not to attack the cat, but your body is sending the message that you are not okay with the cat entering the room, and that gives him permission to address it his way.

Then came the tip for business. “All mammals read body language before anything else. Dogs are just more sensitive to it.” My career life flashed before my eyes.

I noticed Kim, her hand puffy and red from the cat bite (our next stop would be the clinic). In a mutual past life, Kim had been my Chief Operating Officer in my interactive media company, Digital Café, and she was the kind of person who could just come out and say what had to be said where I had trouble bringing up delicate topics like “we’re over budget” or “we screwed something up and it was going to take longer.”

What was it about some people that lets them just put it out there, where other people’s attempts to deliver bad news or broach tough subjects creates palpable tension. I seem to go wrong in the setup, and the other person becomes threatened in anticipation of what I might say.

I’m trying to show care and compassion in easing them into it, and they’re bracing themselves for the sky to fall, because my body language is warning them that something bad is coming. I remember getting close to “having the conversation,” only to back off because the would-be recipient suddenly appeared too fragile. I created that in them.

It’s body language that’s setting the stage for a horror scene. This happens with important messages like, “The client has a problem with the work you delivered,” or, ‘We’re announcing layoffs,” or, “I’m going to need you to stay late… again.” I remembered Kim being able to just put stuff like that out there, and nobody fainted, or even gasped.

Her body language was like Angela Strong’s. She was able to find “relaxed.” She could be factually objective about what I was so subjective about. Kim and Angela were both able to choose not to put something deep and personal into something they wanted to be nothing more than information.

My work is all about inspiring people – putting more behind the words, making it personal, amping up the power of possibility to milk every moment to its highest experience. That’s what, at SagePresence, we do. But sometimes a word is just a word, and you don’t want to add to it.

This week, I grasped the strategy of calming situations with a casual, neutral body language. And I’ve proven that both at work and at home. I begin with the “appreciation sandwich” that SagePresence is famous for in its business communication strategies, and all our public speaking. I practice genuinely appreciating the person I’m talking to at the beginning and end of any crucial interaction to silently communicate care and respect.

Between the open and close on appreciation, I have mastered the body language that says, “Calm, and relaxed… no big thing.” I get there by feeling it.

Emotions are often a reaction, like the fear that pounded from my heart which was picked up on by my dog. The filmmaker in me knows that emotions are also an activity, and I have engaged in the activity of the “no big thing” feeling. With that feeling, my body language is calm, and relaxed. No big thing. And with that emotion, I can just put things out there with the best of them, like Kim Hyers and Angela Strong.

I walked Max today. We walked around the block, past two ill-behaved dogs who were pulling and tugging their masters for a drag around the block. Max kept his attention on me, and we walked right through them, and I held his leash with two fingers, the chain dragging on the sidewalk. We were calm, and relaxed… no big thing.

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