Chapter One–The Blind Date (Part Two)

After I posted my entry for yesterday, it reminded me of something very pleasant that happened to me recently.

In yesterday’s posting, I wrote about Jo using a strategy on her blind date with Sean which was designed to scare off wimpy men. Fortunately for Jo, it failed to scare off Sean–who by most accounts was a shy, scholarly sort of man–because lawyers are trained verbal attack creatures. Her being a first class pain in the behind would have worked on almost any other sort of male–except another peace officer or a lawyer. Both groups seem to be oblivious to verbal aggressiveness.

Writing that entry reminded me that over the years, I’ve spoken to many groups on many topics–some technical, some not technical. From my personal standpoint, the groups that I enjoyed speaking to the most were groups of extroverts, because they give you immediate feedback. If my talk wasn’t going well, I could tell and try to remedy the situation. If my talk was going well, the audience exuded a vibrancy that I could draw from. A week ago, if you would have asked me my favorite groups to talk to, I would have told you:

• political types
• salespeople
• trial lawyers
• writers

Logically, my least favorite audiences are those who don’t easily give feedback to the speaker. Talking to a group like that is painful, because you can’t tell if your audience has tuned you out or is loving every minute of your talk.

The worst speaking experience that I’ve had was giving an hour talk to approximately five hundred CPAs on a technical tax topic.  I knew that my talk was dying because I no one laughed at my jokes, smiled at my witticisms or moved when I made reference to something on another page in the outline. They just sat there in catatonic trances.

When I finished talking, I was half expecting to be ridden out of town on a rail, judging from the tepid applause that I received at the end of my talk.

Consider my surprise when I received my evaluation scores. The group that I spoke to had fifteen speakers over the course of two days. I ranked number two in the evaluations.  Go figure!

Anyway, the sorts of groups that I have the least fun talking to are:

• bankers 
• C.P.A.s
• engineers
• office lawyers (including judges)

Last week I had some observers at my mental health hearings, specifically a group of Houston Police officers, undergoing training in the department’s Crisis Intervention Team (C.I.T.) *

* If you would like additional information about this program, please go to:

   http://www.houstontx.gov/police/cit.htm

which explains this program in greater detail. My staff has worked very hard with the department to make this program a success and I’m always glad to assist it any way that I can. The Houston Police Department has been very cooperative with the mental health community in designing and implementing this program.

 

After I finished the docket, I took questions from the officers. I really enjoyed answering their questions because the questions were all direct with no ambiguity or cant. The officers asked me straight out what they wanted to know and I gave them straight answers in return. It was nice to be with people who give and receive feedback openly for a change.

After they left the courtroom, I realized that my list of favorite audiences now includes peace officers.

Yesterday’s posting reminded me of that.