Category Archives: Models

Examples we can productively study

Doing What Comes Unnaturally

Models, Problem Practices, Rhetorical Mastery, , , , , , , ,
Source: Wikipedia.org
       Wikipedia.org

The experience of facing a discrepant and uncomfortable new role is universal.  Everyone knows the feeling.  We identify with the person who makes the effort to pull it off. 

Assessing someone’s comfort as a communicator usually involves comparing their perfected repertoire of roles against new roles thrust on them.  Over a lifetime we acquire all sorts of comfortable responses to settings and situations we have learned to master.  In the language of the theater, we know the scripts and we can easily pull of the requirements they place on us.

Functioning as an effective spouse, lover, best friend, reliable employee, dutiful parent, devoted son or daughter–even a competent chairperson of this or that committee–is not always easy.  Even when we think we’ve become more or less a one-person repertory company ready for prime time, life has a way of placing us in situations we did not seek. Maybe a person is absolutely uncomfortable speaking in public, finding the right words to say at a funeral, or facing the daunting task of dismissing an employee who has not worked out. We all know the feeling of being pushed into what academics would call a “discrepant role.”

Think of Cameron Diaz as “Kimberly” in My Best Friend’s Wedding. She is mercilessly set up by Julia Robert’s character to be humiliated at a karaoke bar. Kimberly couldn’t carry a tune even if she was given a waterproof bag.  Even so, her good-natured self easily triumphs over some truly awful warbling.

People who handle discrepant roles unusually well are usually called actors.  We marvel at how they can inhabit another character so different than who they are.  Theater is also a model in another sense.  Within the literature of drama the inability to successfully pull of the requirements of a setting is actually a major premise of comedy. We love to see characters having little success coping with unfamiliar social situations. Film and television stars ranging from Lucille Ball and Cary Grant to Jim Carrey and Adam Sandler have all sold plenty of tickets on the premise that a botched effort to pass off a different self can be hilarious. For the rest of us, a potential loss of “face” weighs as a good reason to recoil from what can look like a disaster in the making. And yet the existence of the familiar comedy trope of a fish out of water ought to give us some comfort. To be sure, we don’t want to be the source of someone else’s entertainment.  But the experience of facing and conquering what is for us a situational stretch is universal.  Everyone knows the feeling.  We identify with persons challenged by the new circumstance.  And we know that grace in handling the pressure counts for a lot.

For Americans public speaking is the most dreaded discrepant role. Many of us—actually about 30 percent—are terrified by the prospect. It ranks with snake-handling as a cause of fear.  And yet most of us do pretty well overcoming these doubts and finding that it is a challenge we can conquer.

There is no trick to overcoming this natural apprehension, but there is a useful method working past it.  Focus on what you have to say.  Think of a presentation as simply a heightened form of conversation about something you regard as important.  Don’t apologize for being nervous.  Use notes, but don’t memorize or simply read them.  Prepare an outline as an aid in delivering your ideas in your own words. This is called extemporaneous speaking.  You’ve prepared.  But you’ve also left yourself the advantage of delivering your ideas in your authentic personal style.  If a speech includes data like the line, “Because of epidemic in childhood obesity, many children are predicted to have shortened lives than their parents,” say it with the urgency and shock it deserves. Good remarks are simply an amplified and slightly more organized version of your conversational self.

Remember that audiences expect you to be you.  Even a discrepant role never really changes that.

Comments: woodward@tcnj.edu

Seating: A Concern For More Than Brides

Models, Rhetorical Mastery, , , , , , , ,
Negotiating Table Inside the Joint Security Area Separating North from South Korea Photo South Korean Government
Negotiating Table Inside the Joint Security Area Separating North from South Korea
Photo: South Korean Government

Seating arrangements subtly govern how individuals are likely to respond.  Some arrangements encourage interaction.  Others discourage it. 

Movie stars, producers and other supplicants summoned to the office of Louis B. Mayer in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s complex in Culver City often remember their first impression. Mayer was the very definition of a movie mogul in charge of the studio that defined Hollywood’s “golden age.”  Befitting his place at the center of a industry that worshiped visual impressions, visitors passed through massive carved doors to enter his inner sanctum. Then it was another 60-foot walk between white leather walls to his massive ship of a desk at the far end of the room. The short man who gave us The Wizard of Oz apparently liked the idea inscrutability. All of the office trappings were meant to remind a visitor that any decision that would come out of the meeting was likely to be exactly what Mayer wanted.

Studies of non-verbal elements of communication include seating as a crucial variable.  Seating arrangements subtly govern how individuals are likely to respond.  Some arrangements encourage interaction.  Others discourage it. The arrangement of furniture for a gathering is nearly always consequential as an important communication variable.

Capture.JPG of seating arrangmentHere’s the drill on what to consider. For smaller groups a round table (B) is perfect for encouraging and even equalizing participation. No one has a power advantage by virtue of their place.  Any leader is visually an equal among peers.  Note, too, that at a round table everyone has at least some possibility of eye contact with others: a key variable that helps to encourage participation from the naturally introverted. The downside is that anyone around the table can use even minimal facial cues to undermine a speaker’s point. We’ve all probably used a frown worthy of an M-G-M closeup to telegraph our displeasure at a leader’s point. For good reasons the round table model needs a genuine commitment from all participants to work in common cause.

A rectangular table (A) is more likely to distribute advantages to some and limit participation by others.  In a typical rectangle the power positions are at the both ends.  From these vantage points it is easier to be seen and to control the participation of others.  And so we may be able to push “reluctants” out of their shells by placing them in these positions (even though introverts will often resist being placed at the head of a table).  Conversely, “dominators” will have a harder time controlling a discussion if they sit on one of the long sides of the table on one of the corners. Those positions make it difficult to have eye contact with some participants, especially those on the same side of the table.

A rectangular table is also the preferred arrangement when the objective is to carry on two-sided talks.  Labor-management negotiations, meetings in the “dead zone” between North and South Korea, and other situations where there are distinct “sides” are visually maintained this face-off arrangement.

Source: Wkimedia.org
     White House Cabinet Room                                      Source: Wikimedia.org

Interestingly, in the White House Cabinet Room a President usually sits along one side of the long oval table, not at the head.  But the oval preserves some of the virtues of a round table.  And it looks good in photo ops to have the president appear to be one among others. By contrast, with the serious business of discussions in the basement Situation Room, the President is usually at the head.

Rows of chairs facing a single source, as in the seating pattern represented in  the above diagram as “C” lends itself to giving one person in front maximum control.  It’s an obvious point, but for an interesting reason.  When a member of the audience has only the back of another’s head in their foreground view they have little choice but to give more attention to the presenter, even when that person is some distance away. Audience members are essentially denied most of the non-verbal facial cues that other members can give that would undermine their faith in the presenter’s message.  So arena or “classroom” styles of seating give all the advantages to the single source at the front.

We tend to forget that hundreds died in Vietnam over the Winter of 1968 while talks scheduled to begin in Paris were stalled. The issue? The shape of the negotiating table.  Were these essentially four-party or really two-party negotiations?  Only putting a round table in between two rectangular tables radiating out from the center finally settled the issue. The arrangement saved the South Vietnamese from having to deal with the Vietcong as an equal negotiating partner.  Seating can matter that much.

Comment at woodward@tcnj.edu