Writing Boots

On communication, professional and otherwise.

Let’s just say Tiger Woods’ communication context has changed

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Tiger Woods, I read where we're gonna hear today and maybe more in coming days, some grubby stuff about one long affair or a bunch of serial encounters or both.

It appears you've been so quiet because you've had a lot to be quiet about.

As I've said I'm amazed at how upset I am by all this, and have had to admit: Because I admire your the way you play golf so much, I allowed myself to admire you too.

My inner child, I guess—the same naive little feller who for years accused all your detractors of being jealous of your greatness … and of my hero!

When am I ever going to grow up? Ah, that's my problem, not yours.

But speaking of children, even if this episode blows over, it's now a permanent fact of history and your little kids will one day grow up and read about it on the Internet and have questions.

I have an idea what questions they might ask, because they're probably similar to the ones I have:

• Gee Dad, how could you move through the world with such apparent calm and grace and self-assurance knowing your life is an increasingly unstable house of cards?

• Tell us more about the "character education" you do at the Tiger Woods foundation.

• How could you go around giving pat answers to
complicated questions when your life appears to be a complicated answer
to a simple question?

• And how could you bring yourself to play the young pup in media interviews, talking at every opportunity about about how your father was your "best friend" and saying things like, "I'm honored to continue his legacy of caring and sharing"?

I don't have to tell you this, but you shouldn't be too quick to respond publicly to all this.

You shouldn't even be too quick to respond privately.

Maybe you don't need to respond at all.

Maybe, like Ali, you're great enough to get away with the Popeye defense  (I yam what I yam).

But it looks the caring and sharing shit is over, my friend. And a lot of other smarmy stuff is too. About high time, I guess. For all of us.

Communication advice is common sense; still, it’s hard to come by

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One reason businesspeople hire communicators is that many businesspeople are accountants, comfortable with numbers for the same reason many veterinarians like animals: They don't understand people.

Take my tax guy, an utterly sweet propeller head who recently sent me and my wife "Cristeah"* a client newsletter that began:

Even in the "gloomier cycles" there are still many things to be thankful for.

If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead, and a place to sleep … you are richer than 75% of the world.

If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish some place … you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.

If you woke up this morning healthy … you are more blessed than the million who will not survive the week.

If you can attend a religious service without fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death … you are more blessed than 3 billion people.

If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing that someone was thinking of you and furthermore … you are more blessed than over 2 billion people in the world who cannot read at all.

(And then, without a transition, he gets on with the business of suggesting ways that we can become even more fortunate by dodging taxes through a Home Buyer Credit extension, rolling back our Required Minimum Distribution, and the like.)

If my guy had a communicator to help him, the communicator would have explained, succinctly:

People generally do not like to be lectured about how grateful they ought to feel about their lot in life. They especially don't take well to receiving a cut-and-paste thing that they sense was written for some general audience of American ingrates. And they really don't want to receive this particular message from the person they pay to protect their nest egg, however big or small.

But my accountant doesn't have a communication aid in in his life, and so he goes on sending messages to clients that hurt more than they help.

They say PR advice is really just common sense, and they're right. Still, it's not always easy to come by.

* This is my wife Cristie's name, but she's never used it. Communication lesson number one: A person's name is, to him or her, the most beautiful word in the world. Get it wrong, and you're off to a start so bad you might not be able to overcome it.