Forem: Curious Web Addicts

Communicating your Vision

Curious Web Addicts — Mon, 20 Dec 2021 15:29:51 +0000

In the previous article of this series we talked about developing a company vision and we defined three key questions that can guide us in this process:

Why does the company exist?
What identifies the success of our work?
How should we act to ensure success?

In this article, we will focus on another important aspect of being an effective leader: communication.

Communicating your Vision

In order to clearly communicate a vision and inspire the team, we can use a simple 7-steps checklist:

Refer to core values
Use the power of storytelling
*Use rhetorical questions *
Use the Rule of Three
Express moral conviction
Use inclusive language
*Repeat! *

🔷 Step 1: Refer to core values

When communicating your vision, refers to the same fundamental values that guided you in developing that vision. Ask yourself: What are the values you want to communicate?. Once you defined this, move to next step.

🔷 Step 2: Use the power of storytelling

Now that we have a list of core values we want to convey, imagine you are on stage as you tell your audience: "We want to be bold! We want to be honest!".
Not really effective, right? I could almost say boring.

To be effective, you must convey the meaning of the core values in a way that is compelling to your audience. This is where storytelling comes in.

Communication in the form of stories will generate a stronger reaction when compared to a passive list of data. It influences not only the mind but the heart as well by engaging emotionally and personally with the listeners (2)

A good story is something a person can relate to.

To create a good story ask yourself: What do I want my audience to learn from my story?. You don't have to use your own personal experience. If you relate the story in general terms, you can use something you read, saw or heard and then share it with your audience. If it is a particular story that someone else related, then give that person recognition. (3)

Once you have your story, enrich it with anecdotes, metaphors and analogies that resonate with your audience.

🔷 Step 3: Use rhetorical questions

This is a nice article, isn't it?

Rhetorical questions can be used as an effective communication tool during a speech. They are especially useful in engaging the audience and persuading them to agree with you.

To engage the audience, use a rhetorical question that force them to think about an answer. (4)

For example, to convey a message in the form of "Doing X can be useful for Y", a better approach could be "Why doing X can be beneficial for Y?".

To persuade the audience, use a rhetorical question where the answer is clearly "yes". Once the audience begins agreeing with you, they are more likely to continue agreeing. (4)

That was the purpose of my question at the begging of this paragraph 😜.

You can also try to predict your audience questions and then use them as rhetorical questions in your speech. (4)

For example, you can say something like: "As a team/person/astronaut you may think: what should I do for solving...?".

🔷 Step 4: Use the Rule of Three

If you paid attention during the most popular speeches, there is an high change you heard the speaker saying something like: "Here are the three things I'm going to tell you".

The Rule of Three is a very powerful technique that allows people to remember the message you are trying to convey.  In fact, it's pretty popular in slogans and catchphrases.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité!

Ideas that are presented in threes seem to be more easier to remember, more persuasive and enjoyable. So, next time you need to deliver an important message, divide it into three parts!

🔷 Step 5: Express moral conviction

Moral conviction is the subjective belief that something is fundamentally right or wrong. (5)

We can take advantage of your audience's moral beliefs by reminding them: Why do we ultimately do what we do? Why does it matter?  Who are we benefiting through our work?

The more you can clearly communicate to your audience the moral reasons behind your vision, the more they will be willing to embrace it.

🔷 Step 6: Use inclusive language

If you are trying to engage your audience, you want definitively avoid using words like I want, I see, I expect... .

Instead, what you should do is using the so-called inclusive language : we want, we will accomplish, our team... .

Inclusive language is respectful and promotes the acceptance and value of all people. (6) When used, is shows a positive effects on people and make them feel included, valued, empowered and part of the vision that you ultimately are trying to create. 

🔷 Step 7: Repeat!

And finally, don't forget to repeat the key points of your vision!

Repetition is important because:

Helps to emphasize a point and make a speech easier to follow.
It leverage the power of persuasion. In fact, studies show that repetition of a phrase can convince people of its truth. (7)
Is an opportunity to reinforce the message that you are trying to convey.

Don’t use Repetition more than 5-6 times. A moderate to low levels of repetition can serve as a great persuasive tactic, but when it is used more than that it serves the opposite purpose. Studies prove that the audience seems to disagree with arguments when repetition is used excessively. (8)

So, repeat your vision multiple times, any time you have the opportunity to communicate it to your team.

Follow this checklist if you want to improve your communication skills, but don't forget that also body language plays an important role in influencing your audience.
Therefore, in the next article of the series we will talk about the importance of non-verbals communication. Stay tuned!

References:

Inspiring and Motivating Individuals on Coursera.
How top companies use storytelling to drive results https://www.insidehr.com.au/how-top-companies-use-storytelling-to-drive-results/
Communicate Your Point Of View Through Storytelling https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescoachescouncil/2019/10/14/communicate-your-point-of-view-through-storytelling/?sh=44e586ba541b
How to use Rhetorical Questions in your Speech https://virtualspeech.com/blog/rhetorical-questions-speech-examples
In the Mind of the Perceiver: Psychological Implications of Moral Conviction by Christopher W. Bauman and Linda J. Skitka
UQ Guide to using inclusive language, University of Queensland.
Writing 101: What Is Repetition? 7 Types of Repetition in Writing With Examples https://www.masterclass.com/articles/writing-101-what-is-repetition-7-types-of-repetition-in-writing-with-examples
The Complete Guide To Use Repetition In Speeches by Hrideep Barot https://franticallyspeaking.com/the-complete-guide-to-use-repetition-in-speeches/

Visionary Leadership

Curious Web Addicts — Thu, 15 Oct 2020 11:11:51 +0000

We all understand the intrinsic meaning of the word leadership and it's likely we've already encountered many different kinds of leaders in our life. A leader is someone who can influences teammates to work towards a shared goal. But what makes a good leader and why is it important?

Well, there are a couple of pretty important reasons, but research from 2011 (1) found that:

The leader of a team accounts for 31% of whether that team performs well or not.

What we're saying here, is that you can be surrounded by top-tier talent, but to make a performing team this is simply not enough. A good leader is a missing link. Specifically, a leader with the ability to create and communicate a clear vision to the team.

In fact, another research (2) enlighten that the presence of a visionary leader in a team has been proven to increases employee confidence, especially in times of uncertainty and even represents a positive indicator of how fast a startup can grow.

So how do we leverage these interesting results?

First, we need to understand what vision is. Next, we need to create this vision and figure out how to clearly communicate it to the team.

Understanding and Creating a Vision

What vision means is the fundamental topic we need to understand before we even talk about creating something. So what is a vision?

A vision represents an action plan. It describes where, as a company, we are today and in which direction we are going. It's different from the company's mission or the company's values but is something that a leader communicates to the team day by day, through his words and actions.

To be effective, a vision must answer three questions:

Why does the company exist?
What identifies the success of our work?
How should we act to ensure success?

Why does the company exist?
When answering this question, you should identify the core purposes of the company and these objectives must be specific enough to guide employees.

For example, LinkedIn exists “to connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful”.
This statement captures the company's core purposes immediately and effectively, making it one of the best examples of mission statements.

What identifies the success of our work?
To effectively answer this question, we need to identify who our stakeholder are ( customers, employers and so on ) and visualize how their world will improve if our mission succeed.

How should we act to ensure success?
This question allows us to reflect on the essential values that will guide the choices and behaviours of the team and the company. It is important to include and emphasize these values in our vision because it allows our teammates to be autonomous even in difficult situations while remaining within the limits of the company's values.

In the next article in this series, we'll explore some techniques for effectively communicating your vision. Stay tuned!

This article was originally posted on my blog.

Sources:

DeRue et al., Personnel Psychology, 2011
Baum & Locke, Journal of Applied Psychology, 2004

The content of this article is excerpted from the course Inspiring and Motivating Individuals on Coursera.

Resources for Devs: Frontend Tools

Curious Web Addicts — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 09:10:43 +0000

An updated collection of useful resources that I use (almost) regularly.

CSS

CSS Cheat Sheet
CSS Validator
Autoprefixer CSS: a PostCSS plugin which parses your CSS and adds vendor prefixes.
SVG Path Visualizer

Animations

Keyframes: generate CSS animations and more.
Animista: playground with a collection of CSS animations.
Animate.css: a library of ready-to-use, cross-browser animations for use in your web projects.

Layouts Snippets

CSS Layout: a collection of popular layouts and patterns made with CSS.
CodeMyUI: web design & UI Inspiration with code snippets.

Test & Find

Can I Use: provides up-to-date browser support tables for support of front-end web technologies on desktop and mobile web browsers.
Regex 101: regex tester.
Build with Flexbox: flexbox playground.
Explain Shell: write down a command-line to see the help text that matches each argument.
Unicode Character Table: Unicode Character Table.
VSCode Cheat Sheet

Performance

Progessive Tooling: a list of community-built, third-party tools that can be used to improve page performance

Privacy and Legal

TLDR Legal: lookup popular software license in plain English.
Iubenda: generate documents to make your website or app compliant with the law, across multiple languages and legislations
Blacklight: a real-time website privacy inspector that reveal the specific user-tracking technologies on the site—and who’s getting your data.

Bonus: Interesting Projects

Skaffolder: create fully working prototype applications in minutes.
Mermaid JS: diagramming and charting tool that uses Markdown-inspired text definitions and a renderer to create and modify complex diagrams.
Percollate: a command-line tool that turns web pages into beautifully formatted PDF, EPUB, or HTML files.
Templatemaker: custom sized papercraft and packaging templates for free.
1ty: one-time self-destructing links for sharing sensitive information.

Resources for Devs: Design & Graphics

Curious Web Addicts — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 09:03:45 +0000

An updated collection of useful resources that I use (almost) regularly.

Inspirations

Muzli: a search engine for design inspiration.
Includes: Inspirations, Collections and Colors Palette.
Landingfolio: landing page design inspiration and more.
Design System Repo: a collection of design system, tools and more.
Dribble
DesignBase: a database of highly curated free resources for all designers.

Color Palette Generators

Colormind: with practical examples of colours usage.
Data Color Picker: data visualization & accessible colour generator.
Color Gradient Generator
Color Leap: historical color palette

Digital Assets

Giphy: gifs for everyone.
Blush: create, mix, and customize free and paid illustrations.
Pexels: free video and images download.
Unsplash: the internet’s source of freely-usable images.
Vecteezy: high quality vector graphics with worry-free licensing for personal and commercial use.

Images & Icons Editing

Tabler Icons: fully customizable SVG icons.
Favicon & App Icon Generator
FavIcon Checker
RemoveBG: remove image background.

Design Creation

Prorotyping Tools

Invision
Figma
MockuPhone: free screenshots device mockups generator.

Web Project: development and deploy

Curious Web Addicts — Thu, 21 May 2020 14:04:59 +0000

Hi devs,
I need suggestions for the development of a web project I am doing.

The web page should be just a company landing page. It should have maybe two-three pages with some static articles. The website articles might change in the future, but not on a regular basis.

I have done some researches and there are many options for development and deploy this kind of website and I am a bit confused.
For development, I could go for a custom website in React (which I know pretty well), but given the standard backbone of the project, I don't want to spend too much time doing everything from scratch. I never used Wordpress but I am worried about all the plugins you need to do simple stuff. Moreover, learning how to use this new tool could be potentially more time consuming than the first option.
I don't have any experience in deployment. I have heard about Netlify, but I am not sure it's a good option for this case.

Do you have any recommendation for the stack?
I know this is quite vague, it's still an exploratory phase, but any help it's appreciated.