As one year turns into another, I seek topics with larger reach, in the hopes that they could function as resolutions. This one certainly qualifies: the fine art of showing contrition and remorse. I fancy myself somewhat of an authority on the subject, given that my wife has been telling me for two decades that my apologies are lousy.

To an audience, there are few things more powerful than a presenter who offers a true apology. Showing that level of humanity, sincerity, and vulnerability is difficult to do and proves endearing on many levels. So let’s talk about what qualifies as a sincere-sounding apology.

If you include “I’m sorry” in a sentence, there is no guarantee that it will be interpreted as an apology, and in fact, the exact opposite effect is in play. Take these examples:

“I’m sorry that you feel this way…”

“I’m sorry that you took offense…”

“If my advice upsets you, well, I’m sorry…”

These are unfortunate word choices that could backfire. In the first case, you are not taking responsibility for making the person feel that way; you’re only expressing dismay that he or she does. In the second example, you are allowing for the suggestion that the person is wrong to have taken offense, and the third example sounds downright defensive. All three of these statements could make a situation worse, not better.

Being sorry is really a mediocre commodity. It could be thrown into dozens of phrases, in which it loses all resemblance to contrition. One of my standard lines when discussing people’s expectation of PowerPoint is: “Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way.” This phrase does not get me into trouble because nobody interprets it as an actual apology. The “well sorrrrree” remark is universally interpreted as sarcasm. And that’s precisely the point: being “sorry” is really not worth much.

It is far more difficult to misuse the words “I apologize” or “forgive me” and therefore they carry more weight.

“I apologize for making you feel that way.”

“I apologize for any offense taken.”

“Please forgive me for that upsetting advice.”

What a difference! These sentences acknowledge accountability — they show you know that your actions or words made something bad happen. They deal with real pain and real awareness. They are more genuine and more impactful.

To strengthen my argument here, I look to a portion of my audience for whom this advice is implausible. I have clients who work for city governments, planning commissions, public utilities, and in political arenas. For many of them, the public apology could be politicized and used against them. This is why you often hear the watered-down phrase of “regret.”

“We regret the actions that caused the local grocery to close down.”

“We regret that 50 people lost their jobs.”

If you regret something, it could mean little more than that you wish it hadn’t happened (definition: to feel sad, repentant, or disappointed over). Don’t use language like that unless you are blatantly dancing around an apology. The fact that issuing an apology could get politicians into trouble is exactly why I want you to use it when warranted. It is real, it is raw, it is powerful.

The next time you have to offer up a mea culpa, don’t just be sorry. Apologize!

The world is surely a diminished place in the wake of the passing of Steven Paul Jobs. He is arguably the greatest public speaker of his generation, and while many analyzed and parsed his manner and tried to dissect the secret of his success, few succeeded. He was great simply because he was.

As a professional observer of the craft, I admit to feeling a bit cheated. But not because I will never be able to witness him in action again; I feel cheated because I will not be able to watch him realize his potential. Indeed, I believe Steve Jobs was only half as good as he could have been and I believe he was about to find that other half.

Why was Jobs such a great speaker? It’s a bit easier to answer that if you start with the end result: he compelled audiences to feel the weight of his message. He made people around him feel better about themselves, and he inspired others to look beyond their own perspective. He did all this with an impossible-to-imagine ease of accomplishment that defies explanation. This made him fascinating beyond proportion.

What I find equally fascinating about the man is the qualities of great public speaking that he did not exhibit. If you were to add up all of the reasons why he was effective, compile lists of his qualities, there would be one that is conspicuously absent:

Himself.

He gave very little of himself. As wonderful as they were, his product announcements and state-of-the-technology addresses were consistently devoid of personal glimpses. It is clear that he worked very hard at them, that he practiced diligently, that he mastered the craft, and that he dedicated untold effort to this mastery. But you would not come away from them with any heightened sense of knowing better the man. He almost never made his speeches personal; he almost never let you in.

Those who knew or studied Jobs would attest to his being intensely private. Most of us learned more about his personal life in the five days since his passing than in the previous three decades. His having been an orphan, his having fathered a child prior to his marriage to Laurene Powell, his having dated Joan Baez. While these personal factoids were not closely guarded, neither were they well known. With few exceptions, Steve himself offered none of them. I always wondered how amazing it would have been if he had.

I chalked it up to the crafted facade of the CEO of arguably the most enigmatic corporation in the world. I really wanted to believe that it was calculated, that the Jobs mystique would make product launches, and the products themselves, all the more tantalizing. And as a result, a part of me actually looked forward to his resignation. As is so often the case, once people are out of the game, they tend to let a bit more of their hair down. They open up more, they share more, they are more honest with and about themselves. I was so looking forward to Jobs’ first public appearance post-resignation. I had it in mind that it would be a true coming out, that he would make it more about himself.

Were that to have happened, I believe his speeches would have become even more powerful. Is that even possible? That’s the scary thing — I think Steve Jobs could have been twice as effective as he was. Imagine all of the personal stories he could have shared about his time with Apple, about those heady early days, about creating all of that insane greatness. All of the things that he never allowed in his product demos and MacWorld keynotes.

It is the exception that proves the rule: watch this under-the-radar speech he gave for 2005 Commencement from Stanford University. It is more formal than his keynotes, as he stands behind a podium and reads from a script. But focus on the substance — listen to how he weaves his personal stories into his message. And imagine if he had done that at MacWorld all those years.

It’s almost scary to imagine how impactful his speeches could have been. And I feel cheated that we will never know.

From the title of this post, you might think this will be a rant; it will not. You might also think I have something against those who offer services in social media; also not true. Finally, you might be led to believe that I had a recent unsuccessful experience when hiring a social media expert…and that would be true.

First, some context. Social media has become one of the most important marketing tools in the world. Over half of the readers of this column will have come to it via Facebook and the discussions over at LinkedIn are a wonderful way to showcase expertise and talent. Twitter’s value to the business world has barely been imagined yet, and the explosion of the iPad and other Internet-enabled tablets could play into all of this in a profound way. No self-respecting marketing professional would imagine not including social media support into a suite of services. We are going to return to that last statement later so it warrants elaboration: social media support is a critical component of a modern marketing plan.

I have reached two conclusions about my self now that I’m north of 50. The first is that I create pretty good content. The second is that I lack the resources, personal bandwidth, and/or patience to properly leverage that content through social media channels. So yes, last summer, I found a firm to help me with that, with the express goal of attracting potential patrons to the Presentation Summit, our annual conference. “We know social media,” claims the company’s website. “Businesses struggle to keep pace with this rapidly changing social media  landscape and many are challenged with finding the most effective way to integrate social media into their marketing strategy.”

That described my business, all right, so I hired this company, which I will fictitiously refer to as Social Media Inc., or SMI, to a six-month contract to help me market the Summit and brand myself as its leader.

SMI was as ambitious and energetic as you would expect from a company whose founder was half my age. Their reps wasted no time engaging me in interviews and discussing the multi-tiered approaches that they recommended we take. I was open to their ideas and provided them with access to my Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter accounts. This was necessary, they said, in order to boost my presence and leverage my content. I agreed with this—if I didn’t have the wherewithal to leverage my own content, I needed someone else to do it for me.

What happened over the next three months was nothing short of a cacophony. Sophisticated software, buzzing 24×7, did the following things:

• Scoured Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter for people who showed even a passing interest in presentation or PowerPoint and sent requests to friend or connect with me.
• Scooped up my own editorials and pulled out snippets that were of the right size to make tweets and posts.
• Weaved those in with generic “I sure am getting excited about the Presentation Summit” entries.
• Powered these out the door at carefully-randomized time intervals so as not to evoke the spam controls of the various services.

This all took place in front of two groups: 1) family members and friends who knew me well; and 2) about 550 new Facebook friends and LinkedIn contacts who had never heard of me but who accepted the automated invitations sent out on my behalf. For all intent and purpose, I spammed these people with a loud brew of buzz, juice, and noise. Some of it was merely useless, like random quotes from Mark Twain about public speaking, but others were more troubling, like the one that spelled the software as “Power Point” or the one that used “me” instead of “I” in a sentence. Even my wife said to me “You’re sure sending out a lot of posts and they don’t really sound like you.”

SMI was very good at its core services, which it referred to as “social media growth tactics”—a phrase that showed up on every one of my bi-weekly status updates. But did all of this help me? Did this help my brand? It made me more visible, but I have no confidence that people thought better of me because I was in their face seven to 10 times per day. Did it result in an increase in attendance at the Presentation Summit? I ran a cross-check between new patrons, joining us for the first time in 2010 and all of my new social media contacts—there was one person in that intersection.

Did it make my life easier? Well, I certainly have a lot more virtual friends and connections now, but even that was not handled with much deftness. Among my new Facebook friends were a handful of 12-year-olds, a retired monk who lives in Uganda, and various other individuals far, far removed from the presentation landscape. Worse, SMI did not think to create a new Facebook account for me, so now my one personal FB account, containing all of my tried-and-true friends and family members, also plays host to several hundred people whom I have never met. I don’t want to risk insulting any of them — many of them will be reading this as a result of our new liaison and I value that highly. I just would have liked the opportunity to compartmentalize my relationships a bit.

Looking back, I hired a group with software skills, computer savvy, and high energy, but no practical experience or expertise in marketing. I made the mistake of thinking that a social media expert would be a marketing expert and I now see how naive that was of me. As social media has become such a hot commodity, it is now painfully obvious how many people have hung out shingles with only the technical aptitude, not the experience or vision about winning over hearts and minds.

I am not suggesting that all social media companies would be found similarly lacking; I’m sure there are many that blend a fuller complement of skills. And to those companies, I would offer the following advice: don’t call yourselves social media experts; call yourselves marketing and/or branding experts. Make it clear that you will weave an understanding of social media into an overall mastery of the craft. I have every right to expect that a competent, modern marketing firm will exhibit keen awareness of social media strategies. I have learned, however, not to expect that a social media firm will exhibit competence in the larger arena of marketing and branding.

That was a valuable lesson learned.

Here goes my perfect record: After more than 24 months of successful resistance, I’m going to write about Sarah Palin. In the cauldron of emotion that Palin evokes, I suspect I’m not alone in acknowledging that one of them is envy. I think it would be pretty cool to send out a tweet and be able to dominate the national news cycle for 24 hours.

If I could do that, I would.

To be sure, she is not the only national political figure to be active on social media, but she might be the one to most embrace its culture. And she does herself no favors in so completely immersing herself in Twitter-speak.

She saw fit to tweet on the flap created over Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s recent resignation:

Dr.Laura:don’t retreat … reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend.rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence “isn’t American,not fair”)…watch out Constitutional obstructionists. And b thankful 4 her voice,America!

Well. Let’s set aside a few things here. Let’s set aside that my 14-year-old texts with better use of popular abbreviations. Let’s overlook how difficult it is to distill the meaning or source of the quote “isn’t American,not fair” [sic]. And let’s forgive the incredibly dubious argument that there was any obstruction of constitution that took place when Dr. Schlessinger chose to resign (without being fired).

Sarah Palin was a vice-presidential candidate. She is a leader of the Republican party. She is on anyone’s short list of top candidates for the GOP nomination in 2012. And she chooses to express herself in pop-culture non literacy?

She has completely lost herself in the part.

Embracing social media as a platform for sharing ideas is a fine pursuit. Doing it in the national political arena (where it is still counter culture) is potentially brilliant. But allowing your semantic voice to slide to grade-school level, because that’s the way that young tweeters do it? That is a massive miscalculation that calls the core of her political judgment into question. (I can only imagine the field day Democratic attack ads will have quoting these tweets verbatim.)

Is this woman fit to be President? Of the myriad reasons that people have to say no, perhaps the top of the list is how she chooses to represent herself in public. Embracing social media does not require you to become illiterate. We all get to learn that lesson in the relative comfort of our anonymity. I fear that Sarah Palin will learn that lesson as a candidate for the highest office in the land and the result might not be pretty.

This from a recent attendee to a webinar:

We give lots of presentations for small groups. Our primary audiences are financial institutions where our product would be a good fit for their customer base, and we are trying to convince them to partner with us to offer our products.

In these meetings, we might be able to offer handouts, but not likely to be able to access a screen to have a “live” show. Sometimes, it is challenging to even crack open the deck as the audience members just don’t want it. Do we try to force it or just go with the flow?

_______________

Never, ever force a slide deck upon someone. The members of your audience are reluctant enough to sit through them on their own volition. The implicit formality of projected material makes it less than ideal for small meetings which tend to be more like conversations. While it is possible to create a scenario in which it is comfortable to show slides in that environment, it would require a willing partner. If the partner is not willing, it is never going to feel right.

Presenters in small gatherings should ALWAYS be prepared, ready, and able to speak off the cuff, off script, and without aids. From there, they could introduce them gradually, starting with one or two printed sheets, working up to a handout or leave behind. And maybe, in the course of conversation about a deep topic, you could flip open your notebook to show a visual that would help illuminate the topic.

But trying to get to the slide deck misses the real objective. In small meetings, eye contact is the promised land. You don’t want anything to take away from that while you are trying to engage and connect.

___________________________

Follow up from the attendee:

In a small group, if you feel you need to hand something out to get the conversation going, would you hand out a two- or three-page summary for conversation, and then leave a more detailed presentation behind?

_______________

I would not hand anything out to “get the conversation going” — I would try to make that happen myself. Remember, you are the presentation. And in small groups, your eyes are everything.

Once going, then yes, I would be ready with a short summary, preferably by directing them to the summary section of the handout. I am unconvinced as to the wisdom of having two separate leave behinds, given the likelihood that one of them would be misplaced. My instincts would be toward a single handout with an executive summary in place.