Build Confidence & Credibility: First-person Pronouns Get Your Messages HeardWritten by Tracy Peterson Turner, Ph.D.
Irritating speech habits destroy our professional credibility. Examples of irritating speech habits are sentences that end with dangling prepositions (Where did you hang your coat at?) and conversations peppered with “ums,” “uhs,” “like,” and other space-filler noises. We’ll be focusing here on another speech habit—one that sends a subtle message to listeners that it’s okay to abdicate responsibility.How can a mere speech habit keep us from reflecting professionalism while causing us to abdicate responsibility? Let me demonstrate by example. In seminars I conduct around country, I often ask a question of my clients: What physical manifestations do you personally experience when you find yourself in a tense situation? Generally, answer to this question is phrased in following ways: “You get a tight throat.” “Your palms get sweaty.” “Your heart starts to race.” Now, notice answers and how they are phrased versus way question was asked. In question I asked for what you personally experience. But people answering my question have shifted response away from being about themselves (thus, abdicating responsibility for their feelings) by choosing to use pronoun “you” in place of “I.” This shift of focus conveys a sense of shifting responsibility because it indicates a refusal to accept what they are experiencing. In this situation, respondents are essentially suggesting that they are speaking for me and what I experience in these situations rather than speaking for themselves. In these situations, I realize that respondents are not intentionally or deliberately saying they are speaking for me. But subtle shift in pronoun usage shifts focus away from themselves and on to someone else. And any time we abdicate responsibility for something we are experiencing, we are damaging our professional credibility. We may unintentionally be implying to our listeners that we are refusing to accept responsibility for our actions and responses. Yikes. You mean accepting or abdicating responsibility is that subtle? Yes, that subtle and that damaging to our credibility.
| | EMAIL ADVERTISING.Written by Joseph Robert Neil James.
Sending out emails these days is fast becoming a joke. To achieve an order is getting harder and harder because of large quantity of email needed to sent out, to secure an order,My research has indicated that with a click thru rate of just 1% of all emails sent out, at a conversion rate of 2% - on average - one order should be achieved every 5,000 emails sent out. Keeping in mind that Spam filters block, at least 39% of emails being sent out. This means, if you can purchase 5,000 emails at $0.001 each, which equals $5 per 5,000 – and is very good value for money, providing you are selling a product or service for about $20. However, click thru rate can fluctuate, depending on how good you are at writing headlines, to promote your product or service. The reason why it’s necessary to send out so many emails, to secure an order, is because most people avoid quoting their prime email address, when submitting their website to directories or classifieds because usually once a website has been submitted to a directory of classifieds, website owner receives hundreds of emails in return, within a short time, which is a little annoying. If people could be persuaded to use their prime email address when submitting their websites, 1% click thru rate would increase dramatically because many more emails would be read, instead of being classed as junk mail and discarded, unread.
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