Meaning and belief October 29, 2009
Events have no meaning in themselves.
Imagine you’ve planned a huge party. You’ve planned the food, layed out the tables and drinks on your lawn. Put up streamers and lights preparing for a big night. The sun is high as people arrive. Soon the party is rocking, everyone enjoying themselves. Suddenly, within minutes the wind picks up. Dark clouds gather and rain begins to fall. How do you feel about the rain?
As a seporate example, imagine you are sitting at home reading a book. Outside is a cold winters day, but inside is warm and cosy. You’ve just got yourself a nice warm beverage. Suddenly, within minutes the wind picks up. Dark clouds gather and rain begins to fall, spattering the windows. How do you feel about the rain?
As a third example, imagine you are a farmer and your farm has been in drout for the past three years. You’re walking through a dusty field and suddenly, within minutes the wind picks up. Dark clouds gather and rain begins to fall. How do you feel about the rain?
The rain itself is the same, the surrounding events different. All that really makes the difference is not the rain, but the meaning you attribute to that rain.
Beliefs are like this as well. Because of a belief we attribute specific meaning to events.
How to improve your lie-detection October 22, 2009
From my previous post, I forgot to mention one of the most important aspects needed to improve! (and not just lie-detection either)
That aspect is feedback. It’s all well and good to think you caught a hint that something was wrong. It’s another thing entirely to follow up and find out if it is/was misunderstanding, exaggeration or mistake.
You may think you’re the best person at detecting lies, but unless you follow up to confirm your suspicions, you’re just lying to yourself. Think of poker players, they have to first spot, then test that the tells are consistent.
So what are some of the ways you can get feedback? As I discussed, outright asking won’t help. One of the best methods I know of and use is to write down my suspicions. Write out what they did and said, and what you thought was going on. You can refer back to this in a few months time after the situation has changed. You can ask someone about it at that time as well, as usually the overall situation has changed and they won’t mind telling you what was happening. Often new information will come to light just over that time.
A good example of this was many years ago when I was working as a consultant. One of my clients was a single older female who wore a lot of jewelry. Many rings, often multiple on each finger, bracelets and necklaces.
This went on for many months, until one day she came into work wearing just as many necklaces and bracelets, but a single very simple ring. Instantly this change got my attention. I made a joking, exploring comment along the lines of “Anything special happen on the weekend?” And she replied with a no.
So I made a note. Described the behaviour, and that I thought she had gotten engaged. A few weeks later I got confirmation that indeed she was engaged.
If you do this and discover that you’re wrong, this is much better feedback that if you’re right. And this is the main reason I write down what happened as wel as what I thought. It means I can adjust my thoughts next time I see that same behaviour. Being right means you’re right. Being wrong means you’re learning. But only if you make that effort.
What’s most important? September 17, 2009
I travel regularly. At least one week in two I’m out of home. This means I get to meet many new and interesting people and marvel at the different things they notice.
Of late, I’ve been wearing my Vibram barefoot running shoes for the plane trip. They are very comfortable (criteria #1) and contain no metal (so I don’t have to take them off going through security). They also attract alot of attention.
As I’m waiting for my bag to exit the carousel, a business man in a crisp suit comes up to me, stares at my feet and says, “What are they?”
I raise my right foot and wiggle my toes. “They are called barefoot running shoes.”
“I’ve never seen anything like them.”
“They are great. Very comfortable and good for your feet and posture.”
The next thing he says confuses me for a while. “Are you a podiatrist?”
We talk for a little more before he wanders off to grab his bag. Yet his question stays with me. What was his reason for asking something like that? What did that say about him?
In the end I realise because of the way he asked that he would never wear such different shoes. To him, doing something so strange would be worse than foot pain. To extend on that: His appearance is more important than his health.
Now I could be wrong, he might have been asking to confirm my qualifications before asking advice. Regardless its a good example of how different personal criteria makes a big difference in behaviour.
Think about your own life. What’s most important to you about your work? Is it the money (rare)? Is it the human interactions? Is it the chance to change the world or create something new? Doesn’t matter what it is at all. What matters is if you’re achieving that, or if you’re being frustrated.
Think about what you think is the most important thing for the people you work with. Is it the same, different or even in direct opposition?
Thinking outside the box September 10, 2009
Many people talk about doing it, but few can tell you _how_ to think outside the box.
One of the easiest methods is to ask questions. But not just any set of questions. Questions that are designed to force your thinking outside the box.
We, as humans, have been well trained that a question, any question, has an answer. We find it difficult to not answer a question. If we don’t know the answer we are often forced to say “I don’t know” as the actual answer. Use this to your advantage.
Below is a list of my favourite ‘out of the box’ questions. As you read them, think of a problem or issue you currently have. Also, as you ask them assume there is at least three different answers to each question.
“If I were to do X, how would I?”
“In what situations or context is this problem a benefit?” or “In what situation or context is this problem a solution to another problem?”
“How have I caused this?”
“If someone came to me with this problem, what advice would I give?”
As you read some of the questions, you may think they do not apply to you. These are the ones most likely to present you with ‘out of the box thinking’ – so make sure these are the ones you actually answer!
Simple non-verbal communication changes get massive response January 29, 2009
Late last year I spent the week training in
But this post is not about how good
Let me give you an example. The class contained only Koreans. Their primary language is Korean. English is a distant second (or third or fourth!) So on the first day when I asked a question, I would get no response. The first question I asked? “Can everyone speak English?” The response; silence.
Two days later, we are having an interaction, a conversation. Their English is ok. Not perfect but perfectly understandable. They are (and were able to) on the first day understand me. What changed them from silent attention to asking questions?
One specific non-verbal behavioural change on my part.
I play with things – all the time. If I’m not, then I’m thinking about how to. I also test, constantly. I try things in new ways, use tools where they are not meant to be used, push boundaries and edges. Doing so keeps me interested and learning. This is play.
So after lunch on day two, I started playing with facial expressions. Normally, I smile a lot – but I decided to stop and freeze my facial expression. Suddenly the students started asking questions. Confused, I slipped back into my regular smiling and they lost interest with my answers and didn’t ask more. It was like turning on a switch. Freezing my face induced more questions. Back and forth it went.
One ’simple’ change and my results change. What simple thing can you change in yourself to get different results?
How do you make decisions? March 18, 2008
If you are like most people, you don’t know the process you go through to make a decision. It happens quickly, naturally, and without our awareness.
The easiest ways to discover how you make a decision, is to take 4 of your friends out to dinner.
When you are handed a menu, place it closed in front of you and watch your friends. Notice how one might ask what someone else is going to have. Notice another might read through every item. Another might glance at the menu and close it. The fourth will do something different.
Once they have made their choice, pick on one of your friends with these questions. (I’ll leave the decision of which one to pick up to you, but if you’ve worked with me before, you’ll know my selection criteria).
“What have you chosen?” Listen closely to the answer. They will likely tell you everything about their decision process. Once they finish, ask:
“What made you choose that?” And again listen to their answer.
If you’re lucky, they’ll say something like “I looked through the menu till I found the dish I had before,” or “I opened the menu and picked the first thing I noticed.” If you’re unlucky, they’ll give you a long rambling story about their childhood. Both will tell you how they made that decision.
Now comes the real challenge. Pick up your menu and use their method to choose food for yourself. This doesn’t mean choose the same dish (although you might). If they choose something they have had before, then you do the same. If they choose the first thing they see, do the same.
Doing this can give you a powerful insight into your own decision method (and might have you eating something new – always a bonus!).
So after doing this, what does that get you?
- It gives you skills to notice someone else’s decision method. This in itself is useful for sales, negotiation, business or making your partner happy because if you know how someone makes a decision, simply give them the information they need to make the decision you want.
- You get insight into your own process. Even though you are only choosing what to eat, the chances are this is the same process you go through to pick a car, house, shoes or a pen.
- You now have another way to make a choice. Chances are you may not like this new method – thats ok, you don’t have to use it. You can keep it in your back pocket when you want a change, or are faced with a very difficult decision.
Notice how the people around you make decisions. Notice how you make your own decisions.
Technorati Tags: Business, CEO, Decisions, Group Dynamics, Learning, Management, Motivation, Negotiation, Persuasion, Psychology, Sales
Stress migraine and how to survive it. January 21, 2008
This is the conversation I had with a client recently after he took two days off work.
Me: “So what caused you to take time off work?”
Him: “A massive migraine. I couldn’t think or move.”
Me: “Do you get migraines often?”
Him: “Not often. But it’s been a repeating cycle for the past 20 years or so.”
Me: “Repeating cycle?”
Him: “Yeah. I get over stressed and I get hit with a migraine.”
Me: “Good to know.”
He looks at me with an expression of “What the hell are you thinking?”
Me: “Think about it. You are very stressed and stress can kill. Your body knows this. Your body also knows a great way to alleviate this level of stress. You call it a migraine. You might not like it, but your body knows it works.”
Him: “I don’t understand what you mean.”
Me: “Think of this migraine as a message. A message that is impossible to ignore.”
Him: “Heh. It’d be better if I got a less painful message.”
Me: “Yeah it would be good if that happened. When was the very first hint that a migraine was coming?”
Him: “That morning, when someone handed me their resignation. I felt a twinge in my neck here.”
Me: “Good to know. What did you do when you noticed that twinge?”
Him: “I ignored it.”
Me: “Uh huh. Has there ever been a time when you felt the first hint of a migraine, but it didn’t happen?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “What did you do to stop it coming on?”
Him: “I immediately took that afternoon off and went to the beach.”
Me: “Great! Now there is nothing we can do with that last migraine, but we can ensure you don’t have another in future.”
Him: “How so?”
Me: “Quite simple. Next time you feel that first twinge, take time off.”
Him: “I might not be able to do that, there might be too much work on.”
Me: “Well then, you have to weigh up the options. An afternoon off and no migraine, or two days off with a migraine.”
Him: “Ah.”
Me: “See, you do get a less painful message before you get a migraine. In fact I’m sure you get other messages even before that twinge. It’s just that you ignore those ones too.”
Him: “So how do I know what those messages are?”
Me: “Think about all your other migraine events. What are the common feelings or sensations that occur before all of them? They might be an hour, a day, a week or even months in advance. These will be those whispered messages to listen for before your body starts yelling.”
Technorati Tags: Brain, Stress
Do you Communicate with a mirror? 14 ways to see past the looking glass. October 8, 2007
People communicate every day with themselves. With their own beliefs, ideas, values, maps.
You might have had the experience of asking someone a simple and innocuous question and receiving an angry, unexpected or strange answer. Almost as if they are having a completely different conversation.
I remember one time when I was running late for a train. I asked the time from tall fellow that was standing on the platform. He didn’t give me the time, but instead angrily swore at me and then turned away.
Every day we face the challenge of overcoming our own perceptions and communicating directly with, rather than what we expect or imagine about the person in front of us. This can be hard at times, especially with the people we know well already.
Every human being is unique and special and interesting. Every human being has value (even that guy on the station). Some of the ways to help you break through your own perceptions:
- Look or listen for what has changed or different since last time you talked to the person. This might be noticing their clothing, or hair. Maybe they were recovering from the flu last time.
- It is your responsibility to make sure the other person understands what you mean to say. Assume that the meaning of your communication is the response you get. In other words, if someone acts offended to something you said, treat the situation as if you did offended them.
- Use active listening skills.
- Put down the paper, step away from your email or stop doing other things and give the other person your full attention.
- Match the other persons ‘energy’ or ‘vibe’. If they are happy, be happy. If they are excited, match their excitement. If they are unhappy, sympthasize.
- Apologise when you make mistakes.
- Accept their statements as true. Everyone has the right to their own feelings.
- Stop interrupting and allow them to finish what they mean to say.
- Use the methods for shutting off your own internal dialogue. Sometimes we are having a conversation in our own mind while waiting for the other person to stop speaking.
- Similar to #4, set aside your personal history. If you are having a bad day, accept your emotions and don’t allow them to affect the communication. That’s not to say you should ignore past experiences, or what you are feeling – by all means take these into account. Instead be aware of how these changes affect your communications now.
- Listen to other peoples opinion, but make up your own through direct experience.
- Examine the entire situation. This person is just one person within the whole world. Who are their friends, who are they connected to? What has been happening in their life?
- Imagine them wearing different clothes, or with a different haircut. As the saying goes, the clothes don’t make the man but they do change your attitudes to the man.
- Understand your position of power. What is your relationship to this person – boss, child, employee, friend etc? Different power roles naturally changes your perceptions of others. Being aware of this can help you understand both your own and the other persons behaviour.
What other methods to you use?
Technorati Tags: Business, Communication, Learning, Persuasion, Psychology
The worst position to be in is September 30, 2007
When you are making mistakes, and no body is pointing these mistakes out to you.
What this really means that the people around you have given up on you. They might have tried to point out mistakes in the past, but have learnt that it makes no difference. So they keep these thoughts to themselves.
If you can’t accept or don’t get feedback, then it’ll be just like not watering your household plants. You’ll live for a time but eventually you’ll wither and die.
Technorati Tags: CEO, Change, Communication, Leadership, Management
Ways to boost your confidence August 13, 2007
The words you use might be wimp, spineless, shy or fearful. Other people always seem to be able to tell that you are lacking in confidence and walk all over you, take advantage or just ignore you. And it feels like, after each individual event they build together to make a huge barrier to your success.
This vicious cycle goes on. You try something, forcing yourself past the wall of past failures, but fail and get humiliated, so it makes it harder to try again. Because you don’t try next time, the wall becomes higher and thicker and more difficult to overcome.
Some helpful people might just tell you to “Stop being a wimp and get over it”. As if it’s easy to entirely change who you are. That’s what it feels like; that you’d have to change everything about yourself in order to feel like tackling the world’s challenges.
Confidence, like everything else in life, is a skill that needs to be practiced. When you lose confidence it can genuinely feel awful, and for many people might feel like there is nothing you can do to change it. It’s a common statement, “I just don’t have the confidence to do that.” As though we can walk into a shop and buy a kilo of confidence.
Everyone has times when we feel we can do anything, conquer any fear, take on any project, deal with any problem. The skill of confidence comes in when the situation start to become difficult. Thats when our confidence can start to be eroded.
Confidence may take a while to build, and it can be undermined or lost in a second. All it takes is for something to remind us of that wall and we feel wrong-footed, embarrassed or demoralized. It might be something that reminds us of a past failure or previous time we lost confidence. Think back in your own history, is there a certain situation that you always lack confidence in? It often only takes one episode where you feel humiliated or weren’t sure what to do next, and suddenly your confidence is shattered in that event and possibly future ones as well.
Evaluate what trips you up and what doesn’t
There will be some situations that undermine your confidence and some that boost your confidence. Take a piece of paper and divide the page in two. On the right side make a list of the times and places where you know you feel more confident. You might want to start with listing things you do well. If you know you’re a good listener, for example, you probably feel relatively confident when you take on the listening role.
On the other side of the paper make a list of the times and places where you don’t feel confident. Meeting new people, confrontations, giving a presentation, making decisions, etc.
Now we combine the two sides to create a whole. Pick one or two parts on the right hand side of the paper that you could use to improve your confidence in situations on the left hand side. Let’s say you don’t feel very confident meeting new people, but you do feel confident as a good listener. Get a new page and write these two things on the same line. The left side is again “I’m not confident meeting new people.” and the right is “I’m a confident listener.” In between these two statements combine them into one sentence using the word ‘but’. Now read that whole new sentence aloud. Writing it like this and then reading it changes your experience and understanding. Many people have said this alone is enough to fill them with confidence.
Given that above example, people love to talk about themselves, so you only need to get them started (and every good listener knows how to ask good questions) and they’ll be off. Then you can listen to your heart’s content because you know you’re good at it. This then in turn increases your confidence of situations that previously sapped your confidence.
There will be many other possible times and places where you can borrow one skill to help you overcome a deficit in another. Even combining two or three to become a whole lot more confident much more quickly than you think possible.
Repetition is the mother of skill
If you put yourself into those times and places where you naturally have confidence more often, you will increase your experience and bolster your confidence, not just in these situations but also into the rest of your life. If you’re good at riding a bike, go on more bike rides.
Confidence is just like a muscle. You have to use it to develop it. Unlike a muscle however, you don’t have to spend any extra time lifting weights or going to the gym. You can build it throughout your daily activities by consciously focusing on improving your existing confidence.
If you do have a bad day, and your confidence has been undermined, focus your attention on the parts of your day where you did have confidence. Dwelling on the bad does not help. If you get stuck, use the above evaluation sheet to help focus on the good.
And there’s nothing wrong with every once in a while deliberately avoiding situations that do stop you. There’s nothing so confidence-undermining as consistently forcing yourself in situations where you know you’re vulnerable.
The Confidence Cycle
Losing confidence can be a vicious cycle. You lose a little bit of confidence, and then because of that you do something wrong which chips away another bit of confidence. This in turn causes another error and we are suddenly plummeting towards jagged rocks.
Of course, I’m being a little extreme here, it’s not always like that. In fact you can reverse this cycle so that anything that happens can make you even more confident. Everyone has some areas of their life where they’re really confident, or at least confident enough. This is when those lists of qualities and skills come in when we look at the Confidence Cycle.
This is how it works: when you are confident, you try new things, and the more you try the better you get. Like public speaking, for instance. Any good presenter will tell you that the more they get out there in front of an audience, the more confident they feel about handling whatever happens. NOT that they feel less nervous (some people, no matter how practised they are, never learn how to be calm on stage), just that they know what to expect and also feel able to deal with the unexpected. If they get unbalanced they have enough experience to get themselves upright again.
But without confidence you won’t try new things. Where do you begin?
The one and only place you can begin is to practise. Practice for success. That means to practice just above your current level so that even if you make mistakes you are successful overall. This might mean you practice where no one will necessarily notice or where you are not in the spotlight.
For example, if you feel you have zero confidence speaking in front of a group, don’t start practising in front of a group. All you are doing in practicing zero confidence. Practice in front of the mirror first. Then practice in front of a trusted friend. Do this until you can do it with confidence. It might feel false and embarrassing, but practising with an audience of one friend is very different than going into the lion’s den of an audience of strangers.
Proper Preparation Prevents Poor Performance
Alongside practise goes preparation. Whatever the situation is you can prepare for all manner of eventualities. For example, one of the training drills I give to everyone that I train in public speaking is to give a 5 minute talk. During that 5 minute talk they are to make at least 3 obvious ‘errors’. These errors might be dropping a whiteboard marker, tripping, forgetting a major point of their talk, or anything else. This gives them the ability and experience of dealing with something going wrong. Before something like that would undermine their confidence and set them up for more errors. Now it builds their confidence because they have direct experience of dealing effectively with these errors.
Whatever you choose, remember to practice for success. Doing something correctly once is much better than doing something one hundred times wrong.
If you found this article useful you might also like to read how to build self-confidence.
Technorati Tags: Business, Change, Learning, Motivation, Psychology, Self-Confidence, Stress
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