The ComRes Survey. MPs don’t seem to think that communication skills amongst their staff are that important.

The results of a recent survey of MPs have just been released by ComRes, the London-based polling and research consultancy. The findings are a revelation. In April 2011, 154 members were asked for their top three desired traits when appointing Parliamentary staff.

Academic record, discretion, enthusiasm, organisational skills, personal presentation, political nous, political views and punctuality made up the menu. Inevitably, the data showed differences between party, gender and length of service – but the overall picture fascinates.

Organisational skills ( mentioned by 77% of respondents ), political nous ( 56%) and enthusiasm (57%) headed the pack. Not surprising perhaps, when these are support and backroom roles. And yet these staffers and interns are going to be dealing with constituents, pressure groups and stakeholders, as well as being a sounding board for their employers and potential speech-writers.

The eye-opener came when one looked for the status of communication skills. It was not highlighted as a distinct category in its own right. The nearest one came to it was “personal presentation”. This came a distant last and mentioned by a mere 8% - just 13 of the sampled MPs. Even punctuality rated 17%! One might assume this meant sartorial elegance and not having soup stains down the shirt. Contact with ComRes at Millbank for clarification, elicited the response that it was a category to be interpreted as the MP wanted.

Assuming that “personal presentation” did include verbal and vocal dexterity, then the figures are still horrendous. At a time when Parliament is still toxified by the expenses debacle, one would have thought that professional communication with the electorate would have been accorded higher status by our representatives. After all, whilst you are in the chamber, how your staffers connect to the electorate may have a major impact on your re-election prospects.

Capello says he only needs 100 words to communicate to his players - some of them are taking steps to do much better.

After working with a Buddhist monk, a candidate at the General Election and a company that had a share in building Dubai’s airport, one never quite knows who the next client will be.

Query solved, as a professional from one of the Premier League football clubs comes forward. An interesting guy planning his exit strategy from the beautiful game once his legs tire. A beacon where the normal imperatives are short-termism, taking a game at a time and conspicuous consumption.

Each profession has its distinctive culture and work regime, but few are literally played out before us under the gaze of Match of the Day. This is as precarious an occupation as it gets. Form, injury and a pool of colleagues waiting to fill your shoes make an unsettling context.

Getting to grips with the world of agents, bonuses, contracts, sponsorship, the media circus and the flamboyance of management is a challenge. Not surprising many go under.

Many professionals have difficulty adjusting to a world where they are not the focus of adulation and celebrity. Not many of us see our lives reported on the back page of the local rag. It can be a distortion. This is a world where decisions are in the hands of others and life ritualised by the club. Makes it difficult to step out and be yourself.

Credit to this professional as he looks at a world after playing, whether it be management, punditry or promotion work. This is a guy whose communication skills will be way beyond the clichés of “being sick as a parrot” or “over the moon”. When some famous names are shouting obscenities at the cameras, there are others crafting more professional presentation skills.

Is this how Canary Wharf and other City addresses earn their bonuses?

An interesting little communication cameo was played out this afternoon.

I took a cold call from someone in Canary Wharf, canvassing me to purchase some advertising space on a social media site.

I have no problem with the sales principle here, but the manner in which it was played out was a revelation. It is said that on the phone, 85% of understanding comes from the sound of your voice and only 15% from what you actually say. First impressions do count, but today my canvasser scored a minus all round.

After an early question to establish that I was the decision maker, I was subjected to a staccato volley outlining how good the advertising opportunity was and that “ is a fact”. A fusillade of statistics followed for what felt like an eternity. No subtle soft schmoozing sale here. Reasoned features, benefits, logic and emotion were not on the agenda.

It is difficult to assess what one’s response should be. I tried telling the caller that he was talking too quickly and not giving me space to reply. The response was an audible gulp and the briefest of pauses followed by: “Well, I am the top salesman and meet my targets.” Not much listening then.

It beggars belief that a time when the economy is in dire straits, this type of arrogance comes out of one of our top commercial addresses. Has the bankers’ hubris just down the road become a contagion? I wished my caller well with his next conversation, but I am sure the irony eluded him and his arrogance moved obliviously onwards to the next name on the list. Is this how they get their bonuses?

Cutting the BBC World Service. We are degrading a key asset which projects our culture, influence and language.

On a visit to Beijing a couple of years ago, I was struck by how frequently I was stopped in the street. Those learning English wanted to practise their skills. So what? Well it is a recognition that the world’s largest populated country, values the key communication asset of another. Chinese is a tonal language not easily mastered by outsiders and yet Britain, a pin-prick in size, is home to the world's lingua franca.

All the more reprehensible then of the cuts announced yesterday at the BBC World Service. Cutting Albanian and Serbian services may seem marginal to our lives, but in recent times, these have been areas of instability and we are not to know where the next conflict may be. The World Service enables us to project our interests, values and culture in a cost-effective manner. It is trusted and in a world of variable freedoms respected as an impartial source.

We have a history of punching above our weight and the causes are of historical accident. We are at the centre of the Mercator world map, live on the 0 degrees line of longitude and are the home of GMT. We have a top seat at the UN and for better or worse, are still a financial centre of note. English is the language of air traffic control and it has a heady presence on the Internet.

This budget cut is a short-sighted move. When we have few levers to project ourselves in the global economy, we are degrading a key asset. This is a cut which has not been properly thought out. Our weak communication skills compromise our business and employability abilities at home. It is even worse for a trading nation, when we start dismantling a key asset which promotes us so well abroad.

Getting your message across powerfully, practically and persuasively - rule of three.

The next time you are at a trade fair or exhibition take time out to do a 360 degree whirl, view the banners and give them a score out of ten. You won’t find many that grab you.

Here is an opportunity to make yours work when others don’t.

I visit the NEC and ICC regularly and in a day take in several hundred of these displays. The number that stay in the mind are pitiful. Assume your audience scans you for a couple of seconds at max.

A visit to Earls Court or Olympia, provides fertile ground for observing one of the most misused business marketing tools around. We are talking of the seven foot pop-up roller banner and its cousin, the airship-dimensioned display frame. Erected apprehensively, knowing they may collapse on you or snap down like a mouse trap. We have all been there.

How many of them really catch the eye? Have company managers dominated the design process and content? Have the graphic artists, speech-writers and copywriters had their creative skills pruned? Have we kitted the stall-holders with tools that just don’t work? How many exhibitors pack up their displays, wondering whether the ROI has been justified? The same rituals are played out thousands of times a day.

This is how it goes. After an outlay for the stand, possibly running into thousands, our intrepid exhibitor lays out the gizmos to attract the punters. The bowl of sweets, key fobs, mouse pads and corporate blurb come out of the bag. The backdrops of course are the banners and this is what they remain - a glorious vehicle to market the organisation but woefully misused.

So where does it all go wrong? Well it could be the content of the banner for starters. There could be too much of it. As the punters walk the aisles they will give a fraction of a second to each banner, so you need something to bring them in. The name of the organisation and the logo don’t work and they are usually the dominant graphic and text. Punters want to know what you do, what makes you different and whether you are any good.

Banners can be run off in a day, but it takes time and skill to put one together which is eye-catching and discourages a high bounce rate. Walk the aisles and make a note of the banners which pull you in. Those that do make you think, tug at your emotions and give the reader something to do.

Next, borrow some rhetorical speech-writing devices from the political worlds i.e. rules of three, contrasting phrases, witty play on words and reversal phrasing eg “Building is what we do best and the best is what we build.” Useful and snappy copy for the press release and website. Living in a five second culture, we do not tolerate lots of text so keep it down. Cut out the jargon.

Space on a stand can be at a premium so why not use the banner itself as a demonstration tool? Something you can engage the client with. It is almost as if the production of the display banner becomes an end in itself when in reality it is a starting point for promoting goods and services.

Ineffective banners emphasise company name, logo and contact details and have no call to action. The punchline is simple: create banners that are pithy, witty and engaging.

Of course you need presenters who can bring them to life – but that is another story. www.younevercantell.co.uk

Does the Wikileak affair mean a return to pencil and paper? Do the leaks tell us anything we could not have guessed anyway?

It will take time for the dust to settle over the Wikileak revelations so that a reasoned assessment can be made of their publication. Words such as hypocrisy, embarrassment and incompetence will be bandied around by the population, as they see the revealed workings of its political and diplomatic elites. Governments should be receiving more in their input tray than high level gossip. Are the diplomatic positions revealed any different from what a professional analyst knew anyway? Security services and diplomats will jump and down over the “irresponsible” exposure of sources and positions taken. However much redacting takes place, humint may have been compromised, and there is only so much one can glean from remote sensing and drones.

The digital communication revolution has seen the inexorable onward and upward rise of traffic and there has been nothing to date to question this curve. The Wikileaks will give everyone pause for thought. What information is being hoovered up, why and to what end? We have information overload drowning in a sea of data.

For the first time, there has been a massive leakage of digital material to the global press. How much of this quarter of a million pages will provide interesting copy is questionable. In the five-second culture, the public will not be listening as the next story emerges.

Security tightening will be a given. Beyond that, we are likely to see a more circumspect use of the digital networks. We may see a return to a more humble way of communication i.e. word of mouth and paper and pencil. They have their flaws, notably dated and partial pictures of a situation. On the other hand easier to erase and deny.

Is David Camerons’s decision to have a personal photographer the first signs of a rather different communication battle leading to the next election?

David Cameron’s decision to appoint a personal photographer – albeit salaried as a civil servant, has a little more behind it than accusations of vanity and cost.

The last election is receding rapidly in the memory and 2015 beckons. The last election was a game-changer with televised debates. What innovations will we have next time around?

Hustings, leaflets through the letterbox, canvassing, party broadcasts and big hoardings have reached their sell-by date. One may question the efficacy of databases and telephone canvassing. Not much left really. Four years is a long way off, and social media, apps and the blogosphere may have developed a presence and maturity beyond their current infancy.

People absorb information in different ways. Reading and listening can be turgid media, especially if the message is tedious to start with. Could it be that the photographer will herald the start of a pictorial narrative which can be taken to the public for the next election?. The success of OK and Hello stems not just from the subject matter, but also the balance between the photos and words. An easy scan which is just what politicians seek to get their message across.

You need a pictorial bank and you need to start now. You need photos with a message and context beyond record shots of the great and the good. Good photos might bring to life ethereal concepts such as The Big Society. It will be interesting to see how the Photoshopped-photographs are drip-fed through to the media. What, when and to whom? We can’t believe that they are just going into a photo archive for posterity and to show the family. This seemingly innocuous move from Cameron may have more behind it than meets the eye. Watch this space?

Sure as little apples how we pronounce H will provide a field day for how we read each other.

The recent BBC-reported and British Library-inspired discussion about whether we use “atch” or “haych” in our linguistic repertoire will be stimulating heated discussions all over the country. Language changes, the issue is whether it is evolutionary or otherwise.

Perhaps the sustained showing of television soaps, with their emphasis on vowels rather than consonants has brought about a fundamental change in our language. It brings into focus many of the prejudices and stereotypes we have about class, education and status. Sociolinguistics, schools, families and employers will have a field day over this confection.

In an increasingly competitive world for jobs, contracts, sales or votes, how we speak can have a disproportionate impact on success or otherwise. How many of us like our taped voice? When 93% of our first impressions are gained from how we look and how we use our voice, more attention should be paid to how we speak. When Shakespeare noted that “the apparel oft proclaims the man”, he should have added verbal dexterity.

I am working with three corporate business clients at the moment. It is interesting to see that in each case, much more attention is being paid to the presentational skills of their employees as they pitch, bid and tender. Schools and colleges don’t seem to give you a qualification in how you speak, but if they did, future applicants for jobs would certainly have the edge over the competition.

Politicians need to talk like the rest of us.

The political classes have a poor image and it is not just expenses that got us in this pickle - it could be how they converse. Imagine this scene. You have won your political seat at national or local level and then have to face the scrutiny of awkward questions, either from the electorate, press or television interview. You are under pressure to deliver honest answers and yet not embarrass colleagues, tell lies or be evasive. You don’t want to be misinterpreted and yet you want to give yourself wriggle room for the future. You want to display integrity, and candour and give an opinion on a situation which you may not fully comprehend. How do you defend a position publicly, which away from the crowds and glare of the cameras, you know to be wrong or indefensible? You want to keep your gesture clusters, leakages and tells under wraps. How do you keep all of these balls in the air at the same time?

The political class has developed a different genre of conversation to the rest of us. Yes, we know about the politician’s answer rephrasing a question to the one that enables an easier answer. And what about straw man thinking, giving your opponent a position he/she may not have adopted in the first place and then knocking the stuffing out of it? How does one develop the skills to practice these arts in the first place? Is it ingrained in the character and personality or is it learned by watching others and learning on the job?

Does our political representative sit down with pen and paper and create a flow chart to work out the myriad of question and answer permutations? Do our interviewees play mental chess games in their beds at night, anticipating the interviewer's opening gambit and then working out appropriate counter moves? Do they rehearse their answers so that the oratory and rhetoric seem convincing?

Not answering a question, rephrasing the question or dissembling are part and parcel of human discourse. What makes the political conversation interesting is that it is done in the public gaze. Talking "off the record" is a symptom of the dilemma.

Not surprisingly, the electorate can sniff out an answer that does not accord with common-sense. It is embarrassing and irritating to observe a political representative defending the indefensible. What a shock it would be to hear “ I don’t know” or “I haven’t thought about that.” or “I got that one wrong.” proffered as answers. We have heard it since the election but it would have been nice to have heard it before.

That is how the rest of us talk and if the Westminster bubble talked in the same manner then the cynicism the electorate displays for our representatives might be tempered. Coalition politics and a rebirth of the opposition provide opportunities not only for changed policy and personalities but, more importantly, how we conduct our conversations and interviews in the first place.

Dickensian advertising techniques for 21st century business and politics.

Is it time for some retro-advertising techniques for the business and political worlds?

You don’t get more 21st century than a Wolves-Aston Villa match. What is surprising, is seeing the style of one of the techniques used to advertise the event. In the last century and before, it was common place to see pedestrians walking the street and carrying display boards hung from the shoulders – a type of A board. They either advertised consumables or noted that the end of the world was nigh. So it was a surprise today, to see somebody doing the same and inviting one to buy tickets for the said match. Time, date, price and vendor details were read easily. You felt you were in a time warp and it certainly caught the attention. But this was not a one off.

A month before, I had seen something similar at various road junctions around the city. This time it was an entrepreneur and franchisee-holder advertising his fast food wares – a spoiling action to counter the opening of a competitor nearby. The imaginative spoiler employed forty students over the weekend. Recruited from a local college and paid above the minimum wage, the students worked in shifts at road junctions to convey the messages on their boards.

So what? Well, it was low key, simple, cheap – almost intermediate technology and in the slow-moving traffic flow, the message was put over effectively. It stood out from the usual marketing and advertising techniques with which we are bombarded. We have our trade fair vertical banners today, but somehow we don’t do just justice to the investment placed in their design and manufacture. Political hoardings are being ridiculed by subversive graffiti copywriters, whilst the rotating electronic devices lack a certain presence. Perhaps a revisit to Dickensian media might be worth a try. It really would be localism and if business is giving it a try why not politics?

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"Bullet Points" say it all about communication. We need gentler language.

An interesting piece of research published by Ofcom recently, suggests that the average citizen is using communication technologies and their different platforms, to the tune of over seven hours a day. This hides the fact that an individual might be multi-tasking the technologies in the first place, ie watching television with a blackberry to hand.

One wonders what the neurological implications might be ie thought, concentration and other cognitive attributes. They might throw up awkward issues, but even more worrying, is the implication for social interaction and how we communicate with each other.

Having just returned from a trekking trip around the Mont Blanc Circuit, I reflected on conversations with fellow travelers as we negotiated forests and glaciers. One stands out in particular.

A beef farmer from Scotland observed that language could be brutal. Strange how chance conversations can develop in unexpected ways. He noted that emails and texting encourage a perfunctory and terse exchange of information and we took it from there.

It is as if technology dominates the communication process and personality and conversation become the casualties. You can’t get much more brutal than the use of terminology such as “bullet points”. The term conjures up images of finality, precision and the snuffing out of life standing opposite the attributes of humanity, relationship and conversation. The logical outcome is that when people actually do meet, their communication and inter-personal skills have been stunted. People will have to learn conversational skills later in their lives, when an earlier socialisation process should have enabled it early on, whether it be across the kitchen table or playground.

How does the next generation actually cope with the prospect of meeting people and having to converse?; how will businesses recruit employees with abilities to handle customers?; will the interview process just be a series of psychometric tests?; how will the budding politician engage with the voter on the doorstep and how will the employee engage the skills of tendering, networking and negotiation? In business we tend to buy from people we like, but how do you develop these interpersonal skills in the first place?

2011 has been designated the National Year of Speech, Language and Communication – a campaign to raise the profile of such skills amongst children; an opportunity to focus on their learning difficulties. It should also be an opportunity for everyone to reflect on how much conversation is going on at home and school when the screen is not so much a source of information but a childminder. The photocopier and wordprocessor together gave us information overload - the democratisation of publishing. The mobile phone and computer now gives us people who can’t talk to each other. In the 21st century, never have we had so much communication, but so little conversational ability when we actually meet each other.