Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Dr. Bill Lampton: Hi there! Welcome to the Business Communication Show. I’m your host, Bill Lampton, the Biz Communication Guy, bringing you tips and strategies that are certain to boost your business and mine. And I don’t bring you these tips and strategies solo; I bring them through a conversation with a lively, highly qualified guest. And today, we certainly have that guest coming to us from Montana: Diana Damron. Diana Damron has one goal: help individuals, teams, and organizations build trust from the inside out. She enlists what she calls the 3 Cs: Civility, Communication, and Character, to perform that transformation. Diana is a former television anchor who works with organizations to create, grow, and maintain cultures of trust. Described by her clients as “The Human Whisperer,” Diana has made it her mission to take on the toxic workplace and replace it with a culture of trust. Diana’s latest book, Civility Unleashed: Second Edition, is a “how-to” book for those who want to foster and work in an environment where talented people can thrive. Additionally, Diana provides readers with a transformative 5-step civility tool. And I want to say, a couple of months ago, I read that book, benefited from it greatly, gave it a five-star review on Amazon, and I encourage you to get Civility Unleashed: Second Edition. Along with Diana’s TEDx talk, she’s been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Southwest Airlines’ LUV Lines, and national television and radio interviews. She’s a former television anchor, co-host, and reporter who studied with nationally and internationally renowned speech experts. Recognized as a mental fitness coach, Diana is certified by the International Board of Certified Trainers and is a certified partner of Everything DiSC. Now, as for her sense of humor, Diana stopped taking herself too seriously the day that she walked off the runway at New York City’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel during a national modeling competition and fell right into the laps of shocked audience members. While Diana didn’t take home the Runway Model of the Year award that year, she did leave as National Model of the Year for Television. So, I know you will join me now in welcoming Diana Damron. Hello, Diana!
Diana Damron: Hey Bill! It’s so great to be here. I’m laughing because I always think back about walking off the runway. It was a packed house, too. It was absolutely jam-packed. Now, the good thing was, there—the guys who caught me were these two really good-looking gentlemen who were kind of spotters. They were great, but yes, my—I was walking in air for a while.
Dr. Bill Lampton: Up in the air, right?
Diana Damron: Pop—yeah, up in the air, exactly.
Dr. Bill Lampton: Well, I’ve had my “chivi-chays” moments, I call them. I—I think the one that I talk about most often is when I was MCing a college event with about 500 people in the audience, and they were honoring their alumni, giving four alums what they call the Medallion Award. And I had gotten the bios to read about them to introduce them, and I’d read them over very carefully, as you would do as a TV anchor. And when I was in the middle of reading one of the bios, the audience just erupted in laughter, and I couldn’t figure out why. Did I say something profane? So, I sat down, and the person next to me explained that I was supposed to have said that the lady who was being honored had written a play about the college in 1956, but unfortunately, Diana, I said she wrote the play in 1856.
Diana Damron: (Laughs) Oh, I gotta tell you, when you do anything live, anything can happen. Absolutely anything can happen. Yep, yep.
Dr. Bill Lampton: Yes, and—
Diana Damron: She looked great for her age, right?
Dr. Bill Lampton: (Laughs) Oh right, I mean she wasn’t that ancient, but—fortunately, we met afterwards and she had a great sense of humor, so it worked out okay. And you and I know, as longtime presenters, whether it’s on radio, TV, a seminar, a keynote speech, we know that we’re going to goof. In fact, one of the things I do when I’m coaching a client about speaking, on the handout I give them, I put “Don’t try to be perfect,” and I misspell “perfect.” I say “P-R-F-F-C-T,” and they say, “Hey, you misspelled that!” I said, “Yes, but you got the point, didn’t you?” And we have to learn from our mistakes, laugh at them, and just move forward, don’t we?
Diana Damron: Yes, and it makes us so much more human when we’re not perfect.
Dr. Bill Lampton: Yes, I don’t want to hear a mannequin with a mouth, you know?
Diana Damron: Right.
Dr. Bill Lampton: An absolute robot. We’re getting to your theme of civility.
Diana Damron: Mhm, mhm.
Dr. Bill Lampton: Was there something in your own work experience that drove you to delve into this topic, to become an expert in it, to write a book about it now in its second edition, to speak on the topic of civility, hold seminars, talk about it in interviews? Take us back to how this started for you.
Diana Damron: Two things happened, Bill. First of all, I had gone through something—it’s entitled a modeling school, but it was really a finishing school where you learn, yes, you learn to walk on a runway and you learn to take photographs—or be photographed. But you also learn a lot about manners and speech. And it was so interesting, after I went through the course itself, then—I believe it was during my college years, I came back and during the summer I started teaching. And one of the courses I taught was all about manners and etiquette. I was, I don’t know, 17, 18, 19 years old, and I was teaching women who were about twice my age, who were coming back into the workforce after staying home and raising kids. And they came in and they kind of, you know, you could see they weren’t comfortable, they weren’t confident, they kind of sat back in their chair. Interestingly enough, I noticed as they learned more about manners and more about etiquette, you could see just them sit up, take notice, and there was a confidence. And I always found that was fascinating. What is it about this power of manners, courtesy, etiquette that made these women who, as I say, I was this little kid teaching them, to take notice and to really make this big difference? So, that was always in the back of my mind and I always wanted to do something with that, but at the same time, what I didn’t want to do is teach about knives, forks, and spoons. I—it wasn’t about the—like dining etiquette. So, that was—that was roaming around. And then I ended up in a situation where I was the target in a toxic environment. When I say target, I certainly didn’t know what that word meant in terms of business, but if you imagine having a bullseye on you at—at business, at work, that’s how I felt. And there was no question that I was the target, and it’d been made very obvious to—by the leader. What was interesting to me is I’m a confident woman. I’d been raised by the most amazing parents, so I didn’t have any of that baggage from a childhood. I went home to a supportive family, so I wasn’t going home to some kind of negativity. And yet, Bill, that situation affected me so strongly that I—I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t know what end was up. And I thought it was a one-off. I—I really thought, oh, this has been unique. And interestingly enough, because I was confident when people talked about toxic environments and all of this before, I actually thought, oh, they must be pretty thin-skinned. I can’t believe it’s that bad. Well, it is. And what I found, Bill, was that increasingly, when I looked at the research, it’s more often you find a toxic work environment than not. Civility was needed.
Dr. Bill Lampton: Well, I—I can relate to that in a couple of ways. One is that I’ve been a professional speaker, speech coach, and consultant now for three decades. But prior to that, I was in management positions. And as I read your book and read your illustrations about the lack of civility, one of my bosses came to mind. And I’ll have to say that I really thought Hitler missed a good man.
Diana Damron: (Gasps) Oh no!
Dr. Bill Lampton: And I endured that for—for five years. And you know yourself, having endured a situation like that, it’s very demoralizing, it saps your strength, it—it takes away your—your desire to serve to your ultimate ability. It—it’s very difficult. And so, your going through that gave you a mission. So, let’s—let’s move next to define civility. Uh, I—I know you’ve been asked this many times, how can you tell when an organization is operating with civility?
Diana Damron: So, let me go back one step, Bill, and explain also, and I’m sure this happened to you: one of the lethal aspects of incivility or a toxic work environment is—is when you leave at the end of the day, it doesn’t stay there. You drag all of those emotions home.
Dr. Bill Lampton: Yes.
Diana Damron: Which—which means the importance of getting this right is invaluable. I mean, because you’re not affecting—you’re not just lonesome and it’s isolated to you, you are just sending out those vibes no matter what. So, to your question: how do you define civility? I think this is—this is where we really have an issue today. I define it—my definition for civility is the consistent communication of respect. What makes that definition hard? The “consistent” piece, right? So, it’s consistently being respectful. Now, we live in a world of conditional civility. In other words, as long as you look like me, maybe you’re the same color as me, or the same age as me, or you live like I do, or you think like I do, or in today’s world, you vote like I do, then I will be civil to you. I will respect you. But if you don’t check off all those “same-as,” you don’t deserve my respect. And that’s what we see over and over and over again. So, my whole point is, number one, you gotta focus on that “consistent.” Whether or not you feel good, whether or not you’re in a bad mood and you just had an argument with your spouse, or with a kid of yours, or whatever, or it’s just one of those days when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed, it’s required of you to put it together, get disciplined, get stronger, and be consistent with the civility.
Dr. Bill Lampton: Yes, and—and as you say, it’s a—and I look at the society as you were describing it, and I think the word “toxic” fits a lot of places. Let’s think for a minute about social media. My gosh, people who post on social media on “hot topics,” we could call them, controversial current topics, they do it almost, from my judgment, they do it almost as though they’re anonymous, as though—as though they’re hiding behind the internet and therefore they can say anything that they want to. So that there’s no open-mindedness, there’s no consideration of what might—what might drive that other person to think that way. And this brings me to the three Cs that you talk about, the letter C, the 3 Cs. What—what are those?
Diana Damron: When I thought about my experience in the work environment, and then I thought, you know, what’s really at play here? These things kept popping up: civility, which, as I say, I define as the consistent communication of respect; communication, how we send and how we receive messages—and I don’t mean just the words, there’s the tone of voice, there’s our body language, there’s how quickly we respond; and character. And I think of character as who you are when you think that no one is watching, because more often than not, somebody is watching. So, if you think about it, those three Cs are actually interdependent, they look like a Venn diagram. So, if you ignore one—for instance, we are ignoring our civility right now. I mean, and I can give you lots of reasons for that, but we are ignoring our civility. That doesn’t just stay in that little circle of civility, that affects our communication. As you pointed out, social media, the way we communicate on social media shows no respect for the other person at all. Well, you carry that to the next C, the character, it—it reflects on who we are. And if we ignore our civility, we ignore our communication long enough, it changes our character. So I tie them together by saying you communicate your character by how you exercise your civility. In other words, you tell everyone who you are, what you are, what you stand for, by how you treat others.
Dr. Bill Lampton: We’re going to come back in just a minute, and we’re going to talk about something that is certainly the central part of your expertise, and that’s communication skills. You’re a former television anchor, reporter, you’re a keynote speaker, this is the Biz Communication Show, so in a minute, we’re going to get your tips on how to make effective presentations.
Dr. Bill Lampton: Okay Diana, here we are with Diana Damron on the Biz Communication Show talking about civility and related topics. And just before that short break, I mentioned that we want to explore your take, your advice on presentation skills because this is something you have done at the top levels as a TV anchor and reporter and as a keynote speaker, TEDx speaker. So, many of us have to give presentations who are not professional speakers. We have to give annual reports, we may have to speak at our business and social gatherings, we possibly have to give an outline of a plan—there are many ways that we have to speak even though we’re not professional speakers. What are—or what are keys that you would pass along to us, Diana?
Diana Damron: Well, first of all, Bill, I—I think it’s so important to know your subject. Right? Because you might have a memorized speech and all of a sudden that your memory kind of goes one place else and you forget it, but if you know your subject, you can keep talking about it and you can keep ad-libbing about it and continue the conversation—the speech. So, really know your subject matter well would be my first—my first tip. The second tip is we tend to focus on ourselves, and I would say that’s at the hub of so many of our issues today. But when you focus on yourself as a speaker and you worry so much about how you’re coming across or how I’m coming across, it makes—we set ourselves up for failure, right? We set ourselves up to be really concerned about us. And I would say pivot that and think about your audience. How can I make my audience feel more comfortable? How can I get my message across to my audience? How can I connect to my audience? And so often, that comes with a smile. I mean, it—it seems so small, but just connecting with somebody and smiling, or at least softening the expression. If you’re talking about something very serious or dramatic that happened, you’re not going to be smiling through the entire thing—entire speech. But at the same time, you want warmth to be connecting—you want to be connecting with warmth, so you want to be sure that you’re smiling. And I think the whole thing is to really be thinking about the audience. Really be thinking about that person on the other side of the stage, on the other side of the microphone, but think about what do they need? What—what’s one thing that will leave them in a better place when they walk out of either virtual or walk out of the room? What—what’s a takeaway that will change their life for the better?
Dr. Bill Lampton: I—I applaud everything you’re saying. And—and let’s start with your bit about let’s not just come in there with a—with a memorized text. Uh, traditionally, and I’ve been a—a speech coach for a long time and I’ve been a professional speaker for a long time, and traditionally the instruction has been write out the speech word for word, memorize it, uh, don’t vary from it. And as you just indicated, the focus is in the wrong place. The focus is on you. But when we turn the focus to the audience, one of the things we discover quickly is that audiences are not our critics; audiences are our cheerleaders. Because you’ve been in situations, certainly not with yourself speaking, but you have been in situations where the speaker visibly and audibly flops, and that’s a very uncomfortable situation for the audience. The audience is not your critic; the audience is your cheerleader. They want you to succeed. Plus, they are not looking for perfection because perfection is not the way that we communicate. So, I—I applaud your—your focus there. I’ve often thought that there—there are three things that we can concentrate on when we’re giving a presentation. One is ourselves, as you said, the impression we’re making; the second is the audience; and the third is the message. If we focus on anything except the message and the audience, we’ve got a real problem, don’t we?
Diana Damron: Yes, exactly. And sometimes, you know, you talk about flopping in a speech, sometimes you can think you’re flopping because you misread the audience. I remember one time I was speaking to a—and it was a fairly small group and it was a nonprofit, and there was a woman, Bill, she was right in front of me. I mean, it’s not like I could look away from her, and she appeared to be asleep. Just—oh my gosh, and that is not something to build you up when you’re trying to speak to someone sleeping. Well, this woman, apparently that was the way she listened. She listened—and I—and I’ve had a dear friend who listens the same way. He was kicked off of jury panels because when he listened, he closed his eyes, and everybody thought he was asleep. Well, this woman who I thought was sleeping through my speech came up afterwards and she said, “That was great! May I hire you to help our organization?” So, sometimes we get so caught up with the way that the audience looks at us that we begin to start doubting ourselves and then we can really begin to start plummet.
Dr. Bill Lampton: Well, what I’ve found effective—and I’m sure you have too—is my mother often said “Don’t talk to strangers,” but she’s right when it comes to audiences, too. We—we shouldn’t be talking to people we haven’t had—you know, if they’ve got a reception ahead of time, get there and—and get involved, and—and all of a sudden talk with three or four people, and you’ve got—you’ve got some support right there. And then too, I—I agree with what you said also, that we’re not quite sure of our impression, and that’s one of the things your illustration of this person hiring you afterwards—but additionally, Diana, that’s the great value of video. In many of the presentations that we make, we can see a video afterwards, and the parts where we thought we paused too long or we looked too confused or we repeated ourselves—I mean, after all, that’s just a part of normal conversation. And you and I, I believe, both accept that let’s leave delivery to FedEx and the post office.
Diana Damron: (Laughs)
Dr. Bill Lampton: Everybody else who’s in that business, and let’s just have a conversation with our audience. And I know I’ve found it helpful, and I’m sure you do too, let’s say you meet those two or three people ahead of time, or even if you don’t, you can nearly always when you’re giving a presentation, you can look out there and you can see the—those three or four wonderful people who are attentive, they’re receptive, they’re awaiting your every word, and you—you draw from them, don’t you?
Diana Damron: You do, and I think one of the important things is to remember you—and you mentioned this before, Bill, don’t worry about being perfect. Don’t make yourself the hero of every story. Don’t talk about how you fixed this, that, and the other. And don’t be afraid to explain how you messed up. I mean, it makes people much more—you much more relatable to other people.
Dr. Bill Lampton: Yes, uh—who was it? Some famous person was going to have his picture painted and he told the artist, “Paint me warts and all.”
Diana Damron: Mhm.
Dr. Bill Lampton: And that’s where we’re at—warts and all. And—and in fact, if—if I come across as everything went as planned down to the last letter, I have—I have flopped because we don’t do that in conversation, we don’t do that in small meetings, why would we do that before a crowd? We’ve got time for a closing question, and that is: how is it you are called the “Human Whisperer”? That—that’s an interesting—interesting tag there. What—what is the “Human Whisperer” all about?
Diana Damron: Well, you know Bill, you—your whole focus is on communication. And you know communication is so much more than just words, and or even messaging. When you are helping somebody to communicate, you become something of a therapist. You find out what is holding them back in communicating openly. You—you spend time with them and see what kind of makes them light up. And so I was working with a manufacturing company and I would be in-house for about a week at a time, so I would get to know all of the leaders and all the support staff really, really well. And I learned more and more about what was getting in their way, and those were personal stories. And so you become something of a therapist but it was in the workplace. And I’m not giving therapy advice, but the point is you can use those ex—those stories to begin to connect with people and to begin to help them understand what’s getting in the way of their communication.
Dr. Bill Lampton: Very well said, very well said. Diana, hosting you I knew would be a privilege, I knew it would be highly informative, and I was right on both. And we’re—we’re fighting that old clock on the wall, that proverbial clock. So I know there are people who want to get in touch with you, please give us your contact information that you’d like to share.
Diana Damron: You bet. My website is dianadamron.com, so you certainly can connect with me over there. I’m also on Facebook and I’m on LinkedIn. And I try to be on Instagram, but I’m not as reputa—or not as consistent there. So Facebook, LinkedIn, and my website, dianadamron.com.
Dr. Bill Lampton: Hard to be everywhere, I agree. Well, thank you, and I—I encourage everyone to get in touch with her, get more familiar with her work. And Diana, I hope this is not your only appearance with me on the Biz Communication Show because I and our listeners and viewers will benefit so much.
Diana Damron: Well, thank you so much, Bill. This has been just such a treat to be with you.
Dr. Bill Lampton: Ah, well it’s—it’s so easy to communicate with a top communication pro, it’s as though we’ve had many coffee chit-chats before, isn’t it?
Diana Damron: Yes, yes.
Dr. Bill Lampton: And now that you’ve given your information, I’m happy to share mine. As—my YouTube channel is listed under Bill Lampton, PhD. I’ve been recording videos on YouTube since 2007—now don’t look in any of those I recorded then—but since then there have been—I’m several hundred instructional videos about communication. And hey, it revolves around our favorite word: free. So, invite you to go there, and also while you’re there, subscribe to the YouTube channel. And then my website, since my tagline is Biz Communication Guy, my website quite logically is bizcommunicationguy.com. And on my website, you can subscribe to the podcast, which I hope you do. Also, I want to mention the co-producer of this show, Mike Stewart, based in Nashville. Mike and I first met at the Georgia Speakers Association in 1998, and things were just really getting underway technically in the speaking business, and he came up to me and he said, “Do you have a website?” and I said, “Yes.” He said, “Do you have sound on it?” Wow, how provocative was that? So, Mike has been my mentor and strategist and technical advisor ever since. So, I—I encourage you to go there. And then I welcome phone calls to 678-316-4300. And Diana, I—I again thank you for the wonderful ideas and guidelines that you’ve given us.
Diana Damron: Thank you for the invitation and thank you for such great questions!
Dr. Bill Lampton: Ah, well it’s easy to come up with questions for an expert, and you are that. I would love for you to, and I know our—our viewers and listeners would love for you to, in 30 seconds or a minute, what would be some gems that you would really like to leave with us?
Diana Damron: I think number one: remember what we’re trying to do all the time is to build trust. Build trust with even strangers. Number two: work on leaving people in a better place than where you found them. That does not mean you have to be a doormat, but in today’s world, people are going through things, leave them in a better place. Um, think about who you are, and think about how you can communicate to other people. Don’t—don’t think about their civility towards you, think about how are you unleashing civility towards them?
Dr. Bill Lampton: Excellent, excellent. Thank you again, Diana Damron, for being our guest. Thanks to those who joined us on video or on the podcast, and we invite you to be with us again next week for another edition of the Biz Communication Show. I’m your host, Bill Lampton, the Biz Communication Guy.
