A Simple Formula for Making a Great Pitch

 

A Simple Formula for Making a Great Pitch

Even if you don’t have “marketing” or “sales” in your job title, to be an effective communicator, you need to know how to pitch your ideas, concepts, and perspectives. Here’s a four-step template to help you craft a concise, relevant, and persuasive pitch—without using any strong-arm tactics or gimmicks. “What if you could…” Paint a picture of what your product, service, or idea makes possible. “So that…” Connect your vision to a goal that’s meaningful and relevant to the listener. “For example…” Elaborate on your vision, making things concrete and illustrating use cases. “And that’s not all…” Demonstrate the potential of the idea by describing how it could grow and develop in the future. Imagine you have a new product that helps users clip and organize meaningful moments from their favorite podcasts and videos. Once clipped, the product saves, sorts, and aggregates them in one place. You want to develop a pitch for your audience. Your pitch might be: What if you could capture, collect, and categorize short-form audio and video content? So that you can quickly access and combine content together to make your own meaningful playlists to help you learn, exercise, and be more productive. For example, athletes are curating playlists that contain snippets of podcasts and video advice to help them with particular stretching exercises. Then, they can easily access the content they want, whether they’re in the gym, at home, or getting ready for a track workout. And that’s not all. There is a social element to this product. You can share your personal playlists with friends and even build communities of people with similar interests. Now, let’s look at a non-sales example. Let’s say you’re part of a committee at work to suggest more eco-friendly initiatives for your entire office. You have an idea for hiring a local firm to create an organic garden in an unused portion of your roof area, and you want to pitch this concept for adoption by the committee. Here’s what your pitch might look like: What if we could have fresh produce available on-demand, onsite? So that we can offer locally grown, organic fruits and vegetables to our employees and role model innovative sustainability ideas. For example, we could have fresh strawberries, tomatoes, and cucumbers right from our own garden on our roof for snacking or for employees to take home. And that’s not all. The group that manages the garden hires at-risk youth and also encourages employees to take an active part in caring for the garden and serving as mentors for their workers. As a result, we’d be helping the larger community and establishing important relationships that benefit us all.

6 Foundational Ways to Scaffold Student Learning

 From Edutopia: 

1. FIRST, CLARITY

Before jumping into a lesson, review your materials for brevity and clarity. All too often, students are stuck, not because the lesson is too difficult but because the instructions aren’t clear or handouts are haphazardly designed.

Audit your instructional materials year to year, with the aim of gradually simplifying and improving them. Another effective way to provide greater clarity is to use headings and annotations to direct student attention to key ideas. For example, the thoughtful use of underlining, highlighting, and arrows to call attention to crucial ideas can boost student retention by 36 percent, a 2020 study suggests. Don’t overdo it, though. Consider what is absolutely necessary and useful, and avoid extraneous details and eye-catching adornments, which can occupy valuable attentional resources and reduce comprehension.

Pro tip: After a lesson, check in with students to see how well they understood the directions and objectives. You may think that your lessons are the perfect balance of being brilliant and easy to grasp, but not every student will see things clearly. Highly effective teachers often check in with their students, asking questions such as “Are my lessons and assignments clear?” to unearth pain points, bottlenecks, and other obstacles, a 2019 study found.

2. BUILD BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE

Tackling a new topic without sufficient background knowledge is like exploring a cave without a flashlight: Without a foundation of familiar terms lighting up the path ahead, students will struggle to grasp the lesson. That’s because the brain always seeks connections to previously stored material, which ties ideas together and reinforces the conceptual scaffolding.

How important is background knowledge? According to a 2019 study of over 3,500 high school students learning about ecology, being unfamiliar with roughly 59 percent of terms in the topic resulted in “compromised” comprehension. If students didn’t know key terms like habitat or biodiversity, they had a harder time following a lesson, falling behind their peers who were also new to the lesson but had a stronger vocabulary to draw from.

Before exploring a new topic—or after having students read an introductory text—have students identify words that confuse them, or draw up your own list of academic terms that all students should know beforehand, which you can share on a word wall or play vocabulary games with. During a lesson, pause for a moment and explore those terms, so that all students can keep pace and not be tripped up by gaps in background knowledge. To get students to begin connecting new material to already-learned material, you can read an introductory text and have them engage in small group K-W-L activities, or you can sequence lessons so that overarching connections are made explicit, helping to reactivate prior knowledge on a regular basis.

3. BE MULTIMODAL

Provide multiple ways for students to learn the material by pairing a written or verbal lesson with pictures, diagrams, or video, or by asking them to physically act out concepts, write songs, or reenact historical events. Relying on multiple sensory pathways encodes learning material more effectively—leading to more durable memories.

The research is clear, and the effect sizes are considerable. In a 2015 study, for example, researchers discovered that handing illustrated diagrams to students who listened to a physics lecture boosted performance on a follow-up test by 70 percent, compared with their peers who listened to the lecture with no visual aids. And a 2020 study found that 8-year-old students learning a new language were 73 percent more likely to remember vocabulary words if they acted them out—spreading their arms and pretending to fly when learning how to say “airplane” in German, for example.

4. USE GRAPHIC ORGANIZERS AND ANCHOR CHARTS

Visual scaffolds can serve as a road map for students, helping them navigate unfamiliar conceptual terrain by providing a bird’s-eye view of the lesson. Distilling a complex topic into a handful of key ideas not only promotes comprehension but also can greatly enhance long-term recall of the material.

When middle school students used graphic organizers while learning about the seasons, factual recall increased by 45 percent and comprehension by 64 percent, compared with their peers who weren’t given the scaffolding aids, a 2021 study found. Novice learners are often overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information presented in a lesson, the researchers observed, and have difficulty telling the difference between key ideas and supporting details. Graphic organizers and anchor charts, however, can guide “students’ selective attention” to what’s important, giving them a leg up compared with their peers.

In the early stages of learning—as students are grappling with unfamiliar information—it’s helpful to supply prompts, hints, or even partially completed anchor charts and graphic organizers to make learning more effective. Asking students to start from scratch can overload their working memory, but pre-filling core concepts in a graphic organizer can “scaffold and guide the learner’s cognitive processing,” resulting in a 155 percent boost to comprehension, according to the 2021 study referenced above.

5. USE PRE-LESSON ACTIVITIES

In a 2021 study, researchers concluded that giving students ungraded pre-lesson practice quizzes boosted follow-up tests of retention and transfer by 49 percent, compared with simply jumping into a lesson without any warm-up activities. Surprisingly, the researchers found that pre-testing also outperformed post-lesson practice quizzes as well, improving scores by 27 percent over the tried-and-true strategy.

While embedding practice tests during—and after—a lesson is an effective way to strengthen student memory for the material, pre-lesson quizzes provide a different benefit: They scaffold the to-be-learned material, helping students to organize their thoughts, sparking curiosity as they venture guesses, and encouraging them to “search for the correct answers” during the actual lesson, the researchers point out.

Periodically, you might start a new lesson by asking students to solve challenging questions—ones that are just beyond their ability to solve. Used strategically, in small doses and for high-value concepts, the approach helps students learn how to deal with frustration in a supportive, productive environment. While many will struggle, that’s the point, says learning scientist Manu Kapur. “These problems should be just beyond students’ reach—they’re designed in ways that will activate prior knowledge and motivate students, clarifying what they know and what they don’t know,” Kapur told Edutopia in 2022. “If the challenge hits that sweet spot, that’s where deep learning happens.” Let students explore different avenues, and then step in, building off their ideas and solutions as you elucidate and clarify, he suggests.

6. ASK METACOGNITIVE QUESTIONS

When students encounter new material, it can feel like a flood, overloading their ability to process the information. While external scaffolds—outlines and anchor charts, for example—provide valuable support, it’s also beneficial to encourage students to develop their own portable strategies for managing novel information.

Metacognitive questions provide students with a template for interrogating new material, putting them on the path to becoming independent learners. Students can ask questions like these:

• What stands out to me about this new material? What makes me wonder?
• Which parts or terms are unfamiliar to me, and which parts do I recognize?
• How does this connect with what I already know?
• What follow-up questions do I have?
• Why is this idea important?

You can pair these metacognitive questions with new assignments, suggests Kimberly Tanner, a professor of biology at San Francisco State University, in a 2017 study. “The instructor’s decision to make these kinds of questions part of an assignment—and part of the grading scheme for the assignment—can prompt students to bring a more metacognitive stance to their everyday coursework,” she writes.

Communicate with Kindness

 from Harvard Business Review

Most of us want to communicate with kindness, but it can be challenging to convey warmth and compassion under frustrating, stressful, or maddening circumstances. Three practices can help you in your day-to-day interactions, as well as big, difficult conversations. First, meet confrontation with grace. This means wearing a smile and exuding patience and courtesy when an employee brings you difficult news or challenges your decision-making. An open-minded tone will signal that you're there to listen, process, and problem-solve—not to reprimand or enforce your own authority. Next, give credit whenever you can. Recognizing your employees and showing them gratitude will engender their enthusiasm, hard work, trust, and loyalty. Finally, give people space and clarity so you don’t catch them off guard. Schedule conversations in advance or ask them if it’s a good time to talk—and give them a quick preview of what you’d like to talk about. These kind, simple gestures will give your counterpart an opportunity to prepare, and make it clear that you’re interested in listening to their response.

4 Distractions that Derail Meetings — and How to Handle Them by Luis Velasquez

 From Harvard Business Review

Meetings are critical for achieving goals, as they foster unity and facilitate communication, planning, and alignment — but only if they’re run effectively. Poorly run meetings negatively affect a team’s performance, cohesion, and ultimately its success in meeting its goals.

In a survey of senior managers, 71% said meetings are unproductive and inefficient. And a study of 20 organizations revealed that dysfunctional behaviors in meetings — like complaining or criticizing others — are associated with lower market share, less innovation, and lower employee engagement.

See if the following scenario sounds familiar: You receive a meeting invitation whose title is simply “Product Launch,” with no further details. You attend the meeting because your team handles a launch component and you want to ensure you’re not missing anything. Lisa, the team lead, introduces the new product line. However, within minutes, the conversation takes a turn when John, a senior marketing executive, starts complaining about the company’s culture and lack of support from upper management. This sparks an unrelated, heated debate about the company’s culture instead of the product launch. Everybody is confused and frustrated.

Over many years of working with teams and coaching team leaders, I’ve observed four dysfunctional behaviors that cause meetings to derail. To ensure productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness, managers need to know how to spot, prevent, and deal with these behaviors when they appear.

Four Dysfunctional Meeting Behaviors

Four dysfunctional behaviors, or meeting derailers, tend to show up in meetings that lack focus and clarity and can be summarized using the acronym GAAS:

Gravity problems

These occur when team members get sucked into discussing a challenge or issue that’s fundamentally unsolvable at the team level, much like the force of gravity. Trying to solve a gravity problem diverts time, mental capacity, and motivation away from solvable issues, leading to team frustration. In the previous example, company culture and leadership support are gravity problems that are distracting from the solvable issue: the product launch.

Assumption overload

This happens when team members make excessive or unverified assumptions about a specific issue, person, or even themselves. While some assumptions are necessary, relying on them too heavily and without validation can lead to decisions based on inaccurate or incomplete information.

This behavior also extends to team members making assumptions about each other, fostering an environment of mistrust and suspicion, which hampers collaboration and productivity. For example, Mark and Mary are working on a presentation for leadership. Mary suggests an approach, but Mark assumes she’s trying to take control and claim the credit. Consequently, he withholds information from her. Had Mark addressed his assumption, their collaboration would have been more efficient and successful.

It’s also common for team members to unconsciously assume that others have the same background knowledge or understanding as they do. Even worse, they believe they can solve their peers’ problems without adequate context. Both scenarios lead to frustration and mistrust.

Annoying negative thoughts

Common “cognitive distortions,” or the unproductive thinking patterns I refer to as “annoying negative thoughts” (ANTs), can affect meeting outcomes as well. Here’s how they might show up:

• All-or-nothing thinking: A graphic designer dismisses an entire product line as a failure because they believe the packaging design isn’t perfect. Their pessimism makes it difficult for the team to come up with constructive solutions and dampens the overall mood of the meeting.
• Overgeneralization: A team member sees a single negative customer review and concludes that everyone dislikes the product. Their overgeneralization derails the conversation, causing the team to focus on defending the product rather than identifying areas for improvement.
• Catastrophizing: A team member learns about a minor budget cut. They claim it will result in layoffs and massive project delays. Their alarmism distracts the team from discussing practical solutions for managing the reduced budget.
• Emotional reasoning: A team member interprets her colleague’s lack of enthusiasm about her idea as a sign that her contributions are terrible. The team then wastes time reassuring her instead of discussing the merits of the idea.

Squirrel chasing

Some team members have difficulty staying focused on the purpose of the meeting and introduce unrelated tangents (i.e., squirrels). For example, in a team meeting focused on finalizing a sales pitch for a potential client, one team member keeps discussing the details of a separate project he’s managing. Although relevant to the team’s ongoing work, it’s unrelated to the team meeting’s focus. His interjections distract the team, preventing them from finalizing the sales pitch effectively and efficiently. When the team chases squirrels, it wastes time and frustrates other team members.

Prevent Meeting Derailers

Good team meetings start before they actually take place. Thus, how you prepare and plan a meeting can significantly impact its efficiency and outcomes.

Focus and clarity are two different yet interconnected concepts that will help prevent GAAS behaviors. Without them, team members are usually confused and show up in a way that negatively affects the meeting — or they don’t show up at all. For example:

• Team members who are important to the meeting goal think their attendance is merely a formality and therefore don’t feel they need to prepare, participate, or even attend.
• Team members think their presence implies they have decision-making authority, relevance, and expertise on the discussion topics, even if that might not be the case.
• Team members see these as networking opportunities to connect with colleagues they might not see often rather than focusing on the goal.
• Team members assume no pre-meeting preparation is needed, which wastes time.

Here’s how to keep your team’s meetings on track:

Enhance your meeting focus.

Ensure team members stay on topic and address only the relevant issues without getting sidetracked. To achieve this, organizers must:

• Determine the primary objective. Is the goal to make a decision, brainstorm, get people aligned, or something else? Keeping your eye on the overarching goal will help you develop a focused and clear agenda. For instance, in a decision-making meeting, the objective is to make a choice among different options. Thus, organizers must clearly understand the options, supporting data, decision-makers, and decision-making processes.
• Reframe goals as inquiry-driven statements. For example, instead of listing “goal-setting” as a topic, frame the agenda item as, “What are our deliverables for project X?” By doing this, team members can start thinking about potential solutions even before they attend the meeting.
• Invite only team members who have a direct role in achieving the meeting’s objective. For example, in a brainstorming meeting, you want to invite individuals with different backgrounds and perspectives to stimulate diverse and innovative ideas. Conversely, in a decision-making meeting, attendees must clearly understand the options, relevant data, and have the appropriate decision-making authority. While inviting everyone connected to the topic is tempting, be aware that GAAS behaviors thrive in crowded, unfocused environments.

Communicate with clarity.

Clear communication reduces the likelihood of misunderstandings and distractions, particularly from GAAS behaviors. To communicate the meeting’s focus effectively, ensure invited team members clearly understand three key elements:

• Importance: Explain why the meeting is needed and the potential impact of its outcomes. If this is clear, attendees will see the urgency and significance of the meeting and why their attendance is essential. For example, you could say, “This meeting will determine the marketing strategy for our upcoming product launch, which will impact our sales and brand recognition.”
• Relevance: Clearly communicate how the meeting’s focus is directly related to invited team members’ work or goals. For example, you could say, “As head of the design department, I need your input on the packaging design to determine our marketing strategy.” This helps them see the direct connection between their responsibilities and the purpose of the meeting.
• Involvement: Communicate the expectations for each participant, including any pre-work you need them to complete, to help ensure they come prepared.

Do not take shortcuts in drafting the invitation. Use straightforward, easy-to-understand language, and avoid jargon or overly technical terms that might create confusion. This helps attendees understand the message, especially when they have different levels of expertise.

Handle Meeting Derailers

Introduce your team to the concept of GAAS behaviors by painting a mental picture of our natural response to the smell of gas: a) Identifying the source, b) shutting off the gas supply, and/or c) evacuating the building right away. Provide them with a simple sheet that lists each behavior and its description.

Encourage everyone to refer to these behaviors by name, such as “the gravity problem” or “the squirrel.” This helps the team recognize and address these behaviors quickly while keeping the atmosphere light and positive. Then, address GAAS behaviors in a non-threatening way when they show up. For example, if a team member goes off-topic or exhibits a GAAS behavior, call it out by name, saying something like, “That’s a squirrel, right?” This approach is less threatening than saying “you’re off topic” and can be a gentle reminder to stay focused.

A smile is the shortest distance between two people, so humor can help establish a connection and positive relationship between team members during meetings. Introducing some levity can create a comfortable environment where people feel more at ease to take risks and challenge each other. It can also build camaraderie and trust, lighten the mood, and make meetings more enjoyable.

In a meeting I recently attended, for example, a team member who was known for throwing out “squirrels” said, “Is it OK if I throw in a squirrel here?” The rest of the team laughed and gave permission; somebody else added, “It better be one squirrel worth chasing.” The team member threw the squirrel in, but instead of going after it, everyone remained focused and stayed on topic. This approach effectively kept the meeting on track while maintaining a lighthearted atmosphere. It was a fascinating experience to watch this approach in action.

. . .

Understanding, preventing, and addressing GAAS behaviors will enhance your team’s productivity and turn your meetings from time-consuming, unproductive, and painful exercises into powerful instruments for success. Don’t let them get in the way of achieving your goals.

Microvalidations vs. Microaggressions

 from Harvard Business Review

Microvalidations to Affirm Your Colleagues

Most of us are aware of microaggressions: subtle comments or acts of exclusion that can negatively impact the well-being of people who belong to historically marginalized groups. To go farther than simply recognizing and avoiding microaggressions, try using microvalidations: equally subtle but powerful actions or language that affirm and encourage your underrepresented colleagues. Acknowledge people’s presence. Give a nod, a warm smile, or a greeting when your colleague enters a room or a virtual meeting. In many cultures, simply addressing someone by name and making eye contact signals positive regard. And when someone is speaking, give them your full attention—put your phone away, close your laptop, and listen. Validate people’s identity. Refer to people in a way that’s in line with how they think of themselves. For example, call your colleagues by their preferred names. Don’t use unsolicited nicknames or anglicize names that are less common or difficult for you to pronounce. And respect people’s gender identities by being aware of—and using—their pronouns. Voice your appreciation for people’s contributions. Share directly with your colleagues how they’ve made important contributions, influenced decision-making, or helped build a strong team culture. Thank people for challenging the status quo. Hold people to high standards. Don’t shy away from assigning challenging work. Do provide the resources and developmental feedback people need to succeed.

Disagree Productively

 From HBR:

Disagreements in the workplace don’t have to fuel conflict. If you handle them well, they can be opportunities to build closer relationships and come up with better ideas. Here are some strategies for navigating these difficult conversations. First, approach the exchange with a willingness to learn, rather than a persuasive or combative attitude. Be humble. It’s possible that you’re missing something, and an open mind will invite your counterpart in instead of pushing them away. On the flip side, don’t underestimate their interest in learning from you. Give them the benefit of the doubt until they prove that they haven’t earned it. This kind of generosity will make the exchange more pleasant for both of you. Finally, be explicit about your intentions. For example, before making your own argument, you might say: “This is an important topic. I’m curious to hear what people who disagree with me think about this issue.” Then you could close your own argument with: “I recognize that not everyone sees this in the same way, and I would like to better understand where other people are coming from.”

How to build feedback into team culture

 from Harvard Business Review email

Build Feedback into Your Team’s Culture

As a manager, how can you help your team become more comfortable giving and receiving feedback? It’s all about making the process less formal and intimidating and the feedback more frequent and actionable. To embed feedback into your team’s culture, start by creating a shared understanding of what feedback really is. Host an open discussion where you ask questions like: What does feedback mean to you? When feedback is effective, how does it feel? When does feedback feel forced or scary? The answers will help your team come up with a definition that works for everyone. Next, develop a new process that makes it faster and easier for everyone to give useful insights to each other. This might mean dedicating time in meetings or creating space on virtual channels for people to request feedback, deliver specific praise, and raise ideas for improvement. Finally, in your one-on-one meetings with direct reports, you can take the fear out of feedback by starting the conversation with thoughtful questions rather than your observations. This approach gives your employees more agency in the feedback process and allows the conversation to happen on their terms, rather than yours.