This morning Steve Clayton pointed to a video of Bill Gates and Gordon Brown speaking at the Scottish Parliament (Windows Media File). I noted in the comments that it only takes Gordon Brown 20 seconds to make his first mistake by calling Bill the CEO… he’s the Chairman. If you jump to 50 minutes into it you get to the point where they sit down and take questions from people who’ve written in and both of them seem to become more engaging. They seem very comfortable and even make a few jokes! However they both make the same irritating pointless gestures with their hands that a lot of public speakers seem to make these days in an attempt to appear more active and lively. When I talk I like to put one hand in my pocket (I feel a song coming on) to stop me falling into that trap, and only bring it out when making a gesture that requires it.

It also got me thinking about the parallels in collaboration and team-work. What pointless gestures do we make to try and appear active and lively? The one that immediately came to mind was in the use of carbon copy (cc) in email. We try to include everyone and their uncle that might possibly have a stake in the thing we’re talking about. Instead of just engaging with people to fix a problem or achieve a goal we try to do that and make doubly sure we get credit for it.

[photo courtesy of Lori Tingey]

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