He Who Leads Leads Loudest

So here’s a good little tidbit to consider both for Scouting and for the classes I teach:

The guy (or gal) leading your group? It’s likely they’re in charge not because they’re competent, but because they spoke up first.

And why did they speak up first? Because, according to psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, writing in their book “The Invisible Gorilla,” they’re confident and used to “dominating” in situations.

Here’s what they say (emphasis mine):

They became leaders by force of personality rather than strength of ability. Before starting the group task [solving a series of math problems from the GMAT test], the participants completed a short questionnaire designed to measure how “dominant” they tended to be. Those people with the more dominant personalities tended to become the leaders. How did the dominant individuals become the group leaders even though they were no better at math? Did they bully the others into obeying, shouting down the meek but intelligent group members? Did they campaign for the role, persuading others that they were the best at math, or at least the best at organizing their group? Not at all. The answer is almost absurdly simple: They spoke first. For 94 percent of the problems, the group’s final answer was the first answer anyone suggested, and people with dominant personalities just tend to speak first and more forcefully.

So in this experiment, group leadership was determined largely by confidence. People with dominant personalities tend to exhibit greater confidence, and due to the illusion of confidence, others tend to trust and follow people who speak with confidence. If you offer your opinion early and often, people will take your confidence as an indicator of ability, even if you are actually no better than your peers. The illusion of confidence keeps the cream blended in. Only when confidence happens to be correlated with actual competence will the most able person rise to the top.

So what’s the lesson here?

First of all, I don’t think the lesson is that confident/dominant people are dumb. They’re not. They’re just confident and dominant. When a question is asked, they’re ready with an answer. They may recognize, as the group continues to form – through storming, norming and performing – that they’re not the most able person in the group (others may certainly be better at math, to continue the example) than they are. But they’re frustrated by the more able yet less dominant person’s inaction, even if that inaction is only a matter of seconds. An answer was requested, and an answer shall be given. With confidence.

Second of all, I don’t think the lesson is that less dominant but more able people are easily bossed around or cowed by more dominant individuals. Just as a greater ability at math is a trait they possess, they may equally desire to remain in the background during any group work, because that is also a trait they possess.

So what is the lesson here?

If you’re naturally gifted but content to remain in the background, either be prepared to stand your ground if the group is coming up with incorrect answers or information, or be content to see the group fail.

If you’re a natural leader, get to know your team and their strengths and weaknesses as the group forms so that you can identify the naturally gifted and rely on them to come up with the correct answer. Then supply the confidence and domination to convince the rest of the group that your expert is right.

And here’s the takeaway: Give your team the time they need to sort all this out for themselves. In other words, give your team time to form, storm, norm, and then perform.

I’m dealing with this in my scout calling. Last night, we worked on lighting fires with flint and steel, and it became clear that we have one scout who is highly competent at using the tools correctly to get a fire going. He’s also one of the quieter scouts, more content to hang in the background. Other scouts came forward as leaders, and the most dominant of all spent the longest time trying to get his fire started (his heart is in exactly the right place; he wants to perfect the skill). But as we and the scouts watched the dynamic of fire-starting, it’s clear where the “leadership” of the fire-starting crew is going to fall. And then we have to identify those who are good at taking direction from the fire-starter, so that their contributions of tinder and twigs doesn’t suddenly overwhelm the little fire and put it out.

Our role as scoutmaster and assistant is to provide the laboratory not only for the skill of fire-starting, but so that the boys themselves can sort themselves out and identify who is the best at flint and steel, and who is going to be the best at assisting, so that the fire is built, started, and maintained to the point that competence is achieved. We have to help the boys build competence so that when the time for confidence arrives, even those who are not naturally dominant can rise to the top because their peers have seen their competence and encouraged it enough so the natural confidence is there at the same time.

I’ve seen this in action, in my own son. He is not the most confident or dominant person in the world. But last year at scout camp, his peers recognized his ability in tying knots. When it came time for Colter’s Run – a weekly competition at Island Park Scout Camp that involves knot tying, shooting, running, canoeing and other events, the scouts in his troop recognized his knot-tying ability and gave him the confidence he did not naturally possess. He aced the knot-tying, helping to send our troop on to win the race.

In A Snow Crash World . . .

This is apparently a thing.

But is it anything more than gimmickry?

I can’t ever recall reading a book and thinking, “You know, this is a very intense part of the story. I need some kind of real-world stimulus to accentuate the fact that the characters’ predicament is making me happy, anxious, or in any other way emotionally stimulated.”

First of all, it’s because I don’t talk like that.

Second of all, it’s because the author’s words and my own brain’s creations envisioning the world thus created bear with them the physical stimulus I need to keep reading.

I can’t read of Aslan’s sacrifice, and his subsequent resurrection, without going into tears or feeling my heart pound with joy.

I can’t read of Sam’s despair when he realizes Frodo is going to keep the ring as he stands at the precipice of Mount Doom, to fail after having come so far, and not feel it with him.

I don’t need flashing LED lights or a sensory stimulation vest to do that kind of thing for me. The books I read are (mostly) capable of doing that with my own body and mind.

So it’s gimmickry.

We can’t be that out of touch with books or with stories that we need an external stimulus to make them real. If we do, we’re definitely reading the wrong kinds of books.

And I’m always very suspicious of people who use the word “protagonist.” I know it’s essential vocabulary. But most often I hear it used by people who are trying awfully hard.

Additionally, I hope the creators of this thing see the irony in using the novella “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” as the prototype story for their product. The story focuses on P. Burke, a deformed woman whose brain is used to control a genetically perfect individual named Delphi to shill products for the shadowy corporation that runs things in James Tiptree Jr’s story.

If this catches on – and that’s such a big if it’s visible from space – I can see where the quality of writing that’s attracted to this technology will be low. Good authors don’t need cheap lights or vibrations or a remote-controlled corset to help their readers connect with their characters. Things like this come and go. I remember back in college when the rage among the booky types was to package a compact disc of mood music along with their books, with notations of when to play certain tracks to go along with the story.

I know. Sounds as quaint as Tinkerbell waving her magic wand letting you know when to turn the page. Remember those records? Do they even make them any more?

We Need Fewer Books on Writing and Publishing, More Books on Beta Reading

Seems to me everywhere you look, someone is waving advice in your face on how to write better and how to self-publish your brains out.

I read a lot of these books. Far too many, actually. And can count on one hand the books in this category that I find useful.

And if I got right down to it, I’d be able to count the best on just one little finger. It’s “Secrets of  Successful Fiction,” by Robert Newton Peck, published in the 1980s.

It doesn’t matter that this book came out well before the era of ebooks and self-publishing, because in this book Peck focuses on the fact that if you want to sell books, whether you’re traditionally published or not (though the term would have meant nothing to him at the time) you have to be your best promoter. You. Not your publisher if you’re lucky enough to go that route. You.

Because publishers are, at the fundament, risk-averse. Why spend time and money promoting an unknown when that money is more of a sure bet promoting one of the rare few who, at the end of all things, don’t really need promotion? There are reasons most authors don’t make gobs of money from their writing, and that is because they sit back and wait for their publisher to do the promotions. Peck didn’t do that, and managed, through crisscrossing the country and speaking, sometimes for free, to any group interested in hearing from him, to keep his books in print.

What seems lacking – or at least scattered throughout the Internet – is advice on finding, training, and otherwise taking good advantage of beta readers.

Oh, there’s plenty of advice. There is advice like this. And this. And services like this. But you’d think with the explosion in ebook publishing and self-publishing, finding beta readers wouldn’t be as convoluted as it is right now.

The first, obvious answer would be to create a web site or blog for beta readers (some that would be less complicated than, say, deviantArt’s service) but a quick search shows there are plenty of such blogs and web sites like that out there.

The misery is that I’m having trouble finding beta readers among my friends and family, the best advice I’ve heard out there. I don’t have time for local critique groups – they want to meet face to face, and given that I work ten-hour shifts sandwiched between 1 ½ hours of commute on each end four days a week, I don’t have a lot of time for that kind of thing. Going electronic seems to be the best route – but that’s after I’m through the electronic duty of teaching a three-credit English class after hours.

There’s got to be a way, though.

I still think the best idea I’ve had is to read my book to my kids – kind of my target audience anyway – or at least let them read it on their own. But I know the obligatory read is something no one wants to do, whether they’re my kids or not.

So, your solutions, folks: Where to find beta readers? I know firsthand it’s a lot harder job than it seems at first, so don’t think I don’t know what I’m asking.

Paying for the Obvious? I Don't Think So.

So, what advantages do traditional publishers offer authors that self-published authors can’t find for themselves?

Digital Book World knows, and for $295, it’ll sell you a 2.68 megabyte PDF of a study it did finding out.

Alas, I’m too cheap to shell out that many beans for the study, so a look at the analyses done by others will have to suffice.

Here’s what the folks at GalleyCat say:

• The majority of authors make less than $1,000 a year (no surprise there).
•  Almost 80 percent of self-published authors and 50 percent of traditionally-published authors fall into that category (again, no surprise there).
• Ten percent of traditionally-published authors make more than $10,000 a year, with half of that number reaching the same monetary plateau among self-published authors (again, no real surprise).

Digital Book World, through its press release, offers the following:

Authors held favorable views of traditional publishing and expected that traditional publishing would offer several advantages over self-publishing, and most of the authors wanted to publish their next book with a traditional publisher. However, authors experiences with traditional publishing seemed to fall short of expectation, and authors were not overall highly satisfied with their experiences with traditional publishers.

Again:

Obviously, this study is either really boring, GalleyCat didn’t pay the $295 either or Digital Book World is holding the best gems tight to its chest until enough people pay the cash.

What did they expect to discover? That the moon reflects sunlight?

I might revisit this topic in a few weeks after more details of the report leak out. If more details are not forthcoming, then I’ll suspect either the report reports some pretty obvious stuff, or Digital Book World’s goons are more efficient than we’ve been led to believe.

On the Cutting Edge

(Thanks to Alan Nelson for this screencap.)

We have this picture in our minds of what the early adopter looks like, particularly when it comes to computer technology:

Young. Peach-fuzzed face, willing to survive for days eating nothing but Skittles and drinking nothing but Red Bull. But young. Always young.

So consider Richard Halloran, Owns Home Computer. Back in 1981, he was an early adopter. Sitting there in his luxurious high-rise apartment in San Francisco (per this report), in front of his snazzy TRS-80 computer, he was on the bleeding edge. One of the first electronic newspaper subscribers in the nation. With his red Bakelite rotary phone and the dial-up modem, downloading the entire digital content of his chosen newspaper in two hours, at $5 per hour. (He got his news form a computer in Ohio; there were long-distance phone rates to consider.)

So, you nattily-dressed punks out there looking cool at Wal-Mart with your ginmormous tablet or phone-thingy poking out of the back pocket of your mom jeans, remember, in the distant future, you in your hipness will look as anachronistic as Richard Halloran, Owns Home Computer, to the geeks of the day.

When Inspiration Strikes . . .

This is one of the reasons I enjoy having a Kindle Fire -- I've got an instant little spot, if the battery isn't dead, to record what little inspiration comes my way.

Do NOT Do This At Home

This is serious business, folks. No one responding to an accident or emergency wants to be responsible for taking a life of someone they could be rescuing, but we see here it does happen.

This is on my radar because we recently conducted a drill out where I work and saw an incident where a driver responding to the emergency was driving too fast and not responding to visual direction given by another to slow down a s the vehicle approached the drill site.

This is a concern not only for the potential of hitting someone, but also in not paying attention to someone on the ground who has a better grasp of the immediate situation and who could help the driver avoid, say, driving through a spill of radioactive waste and thus turning the rescue vehicle into part of the contamination that has to be cleaned up.

None of us are perfect – I know I constantly have things I have to improve about my emergency response performance. This is why we practice, and why we have drills. I’m certain this driver will be much more situationally aware and not let the emergency get the better of him or her during the next drill. That is precisely why we practice, so we can identify deficiencies in our performance.

More Magic Woids and Phrases

Just on the heels of a study from Stony Brook University in New York that takes a look at what good books have in common, a pair of researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology takes a look at the commonalities among Kickstarter campaigns that got funded, versus campaigns that went down the proverbial drain.

Lily Hay Newman writes about the Georgia Tech study at Slate.com, where there’s also a link to the presser announcing the study (where you can find a link to the paper itself). For a word weenie such as myself, this study is gold, and could be used in extrapolation by anyone seeking to write a successful bit of writing, whether it be for grants, job applications, or even college essays.

That being said, this is more than a peek into raw search engine optimization; it’s clear form the study that simply inserting these phrases into a proposal wont’ guarantee success – they’re part of a bigger puzzle of success that incorporates winning attitudes as well as winning phraseology.

The study’s authors, Tanushree Mitra and Eric Gilbert, looked at over 45,000 Kickstarter campaigns in a wide variety of subjects. They discovered, after controlling for a variety of variables including whether or not the campaign was linked to a strong Facebook presence and whether the campaign had a watchable video to go with the words, that there is a pattern of phrases linked to the ideas of reciprocity, scarcity, social proof, liking, and authority that were common among winning campaigns. Less-successful campaigns had less of these phrases in common and were more prone to phraseology that made them come across as needy, greedy, also-rans, and less confident about their project’s current state and future viability.

None of that should be surprising to anyone who has written grants, written novels, or sold a product, but it’s good information for people (like me) who have been involved in projects where such selling has to be done and success is the desired outcome. The authors themselves say: “[P]hrases which exude negativism (not been able) or lack assurance (later, I hope to get) are predictors of [campaigns that are] not funded. [U]nsurprisingly, phrases which signal lucrative offers to potential backers (also receive two, mention your) are positive predictors of successful funding.

Backing away from the specificity of this research to Kickstarter campaigns, I can see how the general positive attributes of winning campaigns could be used in other instances where a writer or group wants to persuade successfully an audience to participate, donate, or further consider their work.

The study notes, first of all, that strong reciprocity – clear messages that show what the audience will receive if they donate – are key to successful campaigns (though it appears the draw of dressing up and seeing campaigners dressed up is a negative as far as campaign success goes).

Also key – no surprise here – is that pledgers will fund campaigns they’re already prone to liking, as long as the campaign demonstrates those who pledge will be showered with appropriate praise.

Other successful attributes include campaigns that have strong social proof of previous support (the phrases “has pledged” and “pledged and” show, firstly, that support is already there, and, second, that pledges were often accompanied by other forms of support; appeals to authority; and positive outlook of the campaign as a whole (phrases such as “we can afford” and “project will be” are strong indicators of a successful campaign).

Attributes that resulted in a failed campaign are also telling. Phrases such as “not been able” and “even a dollar” demonstrate past failure, and past experience with failure. Potential pledgers could interpret these phrases as coming from campaigners who are resigned to fail again – and who wants to be involved with a failed campaign? Other phrases concentrate too much on need or greed – “provide us,” “the needed,” “need one,” and the like. There’s too much focus on negativism, failed campaigns, and desperation in these failing campaigns to make them successful.

Of course, all of this has to be taken as part of the whole. As the study authors point out, there are many other variables that also make for winning or losing campaigns. They also point out that some of the magic woids and phrases they identify carry only a weak positive potential. But their results are still intriguing.

Per the study’s authors: “[S]uccessfully funded project demonstrate more active thinking, (cognitive process)a higher degree of social process, higher perception rates (senses), higher levels of emotions (affect) and exhibit personal concerns via references to money, occupation, leisure, and home.”

It’s this bit of conclusionary material that I find most interesting. Look at that list again, and consider how more active thinking, more consideration of social processes, higher uses of senses and emotions and a heightened attention to personal concerns could be used to enhance, say, a novel, an essay, a resume, a letter of recommendation, or any other type of writing where one is selling a product, service, or idea to an audience which has the opportunity to spread its choices among a good variety of possible campaigns. It’s all stuff were hear in writing tips and courses from high school on up. But here, in this study, quantified for our consideration.

Weather Channel, Get Over Yourself.

I guess it’s true that without the Weather Channel, I would not know the name of the storm bearing down on me right now in all its righteous fury. But I do know the name of the storm TWC is raising over its expulsion from DirecTV: Storm Self-Important.

Apparently there’s some kind of dispute between TWC and DirecTV, over prices and whatnot. TWC is determined to emerge the victor, as a self-described “critical life-saving community resource.”

As if TWC is the only source of weather news out there.

Hardly.

I have a question for you, TWC. If your weather forecasts and news are such a critical, life-saving community resource, by is it the only weather news I can get on your front page today is buried uder the following:

Well, there’s weather trivia there: a gust of wind hitting 199 miles per hour in Logan Pass, Montana, and a fear-factoring story about Louisiana “disappearing.” But actually very little by way of actual, you know, critical life-saving weather news.

And let’s face it: the idea of critical, life-saving weather news is about as manufactured as the idea of critical, life-saving 24-hour news broadcasts.  We got along just fine without it for many a year. Yes, I know there are critical weather events like tornadoes and, uh, tornadoes. But you can bet your salt the folks who need to worry about tornadoes are turning to their local news meteorologists who combine tornado expertise with extreme knowledge of the lay of the land to offer the critical news their viewers need.

And here’s another face it, TWC: You’re not the only source of weather news, so if you disappeared off DirecTV – to which I do not subscribe – I would not be bothered in the least. When I visit you, it’s on the web. And I’m much more interested in the weather than helping you fight the good fight with DirecTV.

So get over yourself.

I can go to the website of my local TV station for weather news. I can go to NOAA for weather news. And in my 42 years of life, I cannot recall a single weather report that I thought was critical. Oh, we’ve had some bad storms come through of course. But I never needed a meteorologist to tell me it would be best to stay indoors. I can figure that out by looking out my window.

It’s true there may be TWC junkies out there, hanging on every broadcast word. And it’s probably true you’ve saved lives. Maybe. Then again, maybe not. What’s more likely is that you’ve grown from what was a three to five minutes of local weather delivered by a guy required to be goofy thanks to the likes of Lloyd Lindsay Young into an overly-serious, self-important, money-making branch of some media empire now having a tiff with another overly-serious, self-important, money-making branch of some other media empire.

So be honest with us: this isn’t about providing critical, life-saving news. It’s about money. Amigo money. No dough, no show. And you’re just mad DirecTV called your bluff and began offering – surprise – 24-hour weather coverage from another weather provider, WeatherNation. You’re not the only playa in town, TWC.

Need some lip balm?

NOTE: Interesting analysis of the situation here, including this quote: "'The Weather Channel does not have an exclusive on weather coverage -- the weather belongs to everyone,' DirecTV chief content officers Dan York said in a statement."

Once Upon A Time . . . (Love Letter No. 2)

Joe Banks’ life stinks.

He works at a dead-end office job for $400 a week, in a place he hates and with co-workers who he’s sure are already dead, they look so bad under the office’s flickering fluorescent lights. He’s constantly sick and has gone through a string of doctors who never can quite figure out what’s wrong with him.

Then: Brain cloud.

It’s incurable, his new doctor says. Joe’s got maybe six months to live. “You have some life left,” Dr. Elison says. “Live it well.”

Enter Samuel Graynamore. Graynamore is an industrialist who needs the mineral bubaru, an essential ingredient in the superconductors he manufactures. Bubaru is available only on the tiny Pacific island of Waponi Woo. But the Waponis will only let him mine there if he fixes a problem: They need someone to jump into the island’s active volcano to satisfy their god. Graynamore wants to send Joe to the island, all expenses paid, promising that he’ll live like a king before he dies.

Joe decides to jump.

And jump he does – into a new life where he finds true love and, for the first time in years, meaning in his life.

He also discovers gratitude, and rediscovers God. While marooned on four steamer trunks lashed together in the middle of the Pacific Ocean with his true love unconscious by his side (a long, spoiler-filled story; I won’t spoil it for you) Joe sees the moon rise gigantic and magnificent over the horizon. As he watches the moon, he utters a prayer:

“Dear god, whose name I do not know. Thank you for my life. I forgot . . . how big . . . thank you. Thank you for my life . . . “

Joe finds life. He discovers it was his to have all along, once he got his head and his heart and his body in the right place.

The metaphor in John Patrick Shanley’s 1990 film “Joe Versus the Volcano” is clear: We don’t have to jump into a volcano to rediscover meaning in our lives. But we do have to take a leap. A leap outside of our comfort zone, a leap outside of our own self-imposed ring of misery.

Because everywhere Joe goes, he finds people who are happy in what they are doing, because they took that leap.

He meets Marshall, limo driver, content with driving a big car all over Manhattan and showing Joe an inkling of the life he could lead if he’d see happiness every day, rather than sadness. He finds contentment on “a working-man’s salary,” joy in helping others.

He meets Patricia Graynamore, sailor and daughter of the industrialist, doing a favor for her estranged father only because he’ll give her the yacht they make their Pacific voyage on once Joe is at Waponi Woo. She finds contentment sailing the seas, where she is in command.

He meets Tobi, chief of the Waponis, content that his volcano-sacrifice problem is being solved so easily.

And finally, Joe Banks meets the most important person of all. He meets Joe Banks. And Joe Banks was brave enough to leap into a volcano, and braver still to survive what came after that.