Thursday, September 4, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
How Our Tech Helps Us Get Along - or Not
We are more likely to cooperate in a group when those who don’t get punished. “Darwin had a blind spot. It wasn’t that he didn’t see the role of cooperation in evolution. He just didn’t see how important it is.” Little has changed until relatively recently.
We were raised to compete because we were taught it was a matter of survival of the fittest. Yet, as David Brooks noted, even today, some believe in upfront combat and some in consensus.
Speaking of working together (or not), in many situations experts are not as accurate as a large group can be. “In fact, large groups, structured properly, can be smarter than the smartest member of a group.”
Want more insights on when and how we will act to accomplish something better together than apart? Explore The Cooperation Commons, a project co-sponsored by The Institute for the Future and today’s interviewee, the ever colorful, Howard Rheingold.
Last February this somewhat unconventional Stanford professor won a MacArthur Foundation grant to create a social media virtual classroom, “to show use how and why to use social media. What’s worked and what hasn’t, so far, in this experiment – and how can we learn from his experience, to hone our use of social media? Unlike many other academics, as Rheingold has written, “Talking about public opinion making is a richer experience if you’ve tried to do it.”
A veteran commentator on participatory and social media, he covers Second Life, flash mobs and group swarming that inspired Improv Everywhere, our instinctive desire to participate in a compatible group, ways the faces of political candidates influence voting, civic participation and the proliferation of uses for cell phones to riot, buy, protest, protect and play together.
Following up on how cell phone use is changing us, read the new book, by sociologist Rich Ling: New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication Is Reshaping Social Cohesion.
See links at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2008/06/27/how-our-tech-helps-us-get-along-or-not/#more-709
We were raised to compete because we were taught it was a matter of survival of the fittest. Yet, as David Brooks noted, even today, some believe in upfront combat and some in consensus.
Speaking of working together (or not), in many situations experts are not as accurate as a large group can be. “In fact, large groups, structured properly, can be smarter than the smartest member of a group.”
Want more insights on when and how we will act to accomplish something better together than apart? Explore The Cooperation Commons, a project co-sponsored by The Institute for the Future and today’s interviewee, the ever colorful, Howard Rheingold.
Last February this somewhat unconventional Stanford professor won a MacArthur Foundation grant to create a social media virtual classroom, “to show use how and why to use social media. What’s worked and what hasn’t, so far, in this experiment – and how can we learn from his experience, to hone our use of social media? Unlike many other academics, as Rheingold has written, “Talking about public opinion making is a richer experience if you’ve tried to do it.”
A veteran commentator on participatory and social media, he covers Second Life, flash mobs and group swarming that inspired Improv Everywhere, our instinctive desire to participate in a compatible group, ways the faces of political candidates influence voting, civic participation and the proliferation of uses for cell phones to riot, buy, protest, protect and play together.
Following up on how cell phone use is changing us, read the new book, by sociologist Rich Ling: New Tech, New Ties: How Mobile Communication Is Reshaping Social Cohesion.
See links at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2008/06/27/how-our-tech-helps-us-get-along-or-not/#more-709
“Even You Can Draw It So They Quickly Understand, Kare”
n art class we were asked to draw a familiar object. I picked something simple. A tire. No one could recognize it. And yet, after reading The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures I was able to draw a description of SmartPartnering and another on storyboarding.
Let people literally see your idea to adopt it faster or to buy. Read this fun book by Dan Roam. Dan gives you a method based on our six ways of seeing:1. who/what 2. how much 3. where 4. when 5. how 6. why. These ways affect each step in our visually thinking/creating process:
1. Identify the topic/issue
2. Develop an idea/approach, to
3. Express a solution.
Herb Kelleher intuited this approach when he used a bar napkin to show investors how Southwest Airlines could beat competitors.
I thought of Dan’s book when Ellen spoke to me after my session at the IABC conference in New York last week. Her firm, Cognac shows that even complex topics can be understood in ten minutes or less – with the right “big picture” image. Since our brains retain visual information much better (David Melcher says 89% more) than text, this is mighty good news.
Even better, hear Dan lead a teleseminar on July 9th. It’s free. And he’ll be joined by several bright minds: Seth Godin, Anil Dash and Rich Sloan.
Also hear my interviews with two other gurus in the fast-growing field of visual thinking, Lee LeFever and David Sibbet. Here’s Carl Gude’s visual shorthand for politics.
Ok. If you are still not comfortable drawing your own explanation, to illustrate your text, here’s some free resources for drawings, clipart and photos suggested by Meryl Evans.
Or discover simple ways to make and distribute “how to” videos.
By the way you can hear BlogTalkRadio’s John Havens interview me at IABC.
Let people literally see your idea to adopt it faster or to buy. Read this fun book by Dan Roam. Dan gives you a method based on our six ways of seeing:1. who/what 2. how much 3. where 4. when 5. how 6. why. These ways affect each step in our visually thinking/creating process:
1. Identify the topic/issue
2. Develop an idea/approach, to
3. Express a solution.
Herb Kelleher intuited this approach when he used a bar napkin to show investors how Southwest Airlines could beat competitors.
I thought of Dan’s book when Ellen spoke to me after my session at the IABC conference in New York last week. Her firm, Cognac shows that even complex topics can be understood in ten minutes or less – with the right “big picture” image. Since our brains retain visual information much better (David Melcher says 89% more) than text, this is mighty good news.
Even better, hear Dan lead a teleseminar on July 9th. It’s free. And he’ll be joined by several bright minds: Seth Godin, Anil Dash and Rich Sloan.
Also hear my interviews with two other gurus in the fast-growing field of visual thinking, Lee LeFever and David Sibbet. Here’s Carl Gude’s visual shorthand for politics.
Ok. If you are still not comfortable drawing your own explanation, to illustrate your text, here’s some free resources for drawings, clipart and photos suggested by Meryl Evans.
Or discover simple ways to make and distribute “how to” videos.
By the way you can hear BlogTalkRadio’s John Havens interview me at IABC.
Got a Loafer on Your Team or Committee?
Is someone not pulling their weight yet expecting to enjoy the fruits of your group’s hard work? Here are five tips to prevent freeloading. Avoid the unattractive, energy-sucking role of the nag. Instead increase the chances of bringing out the best talents and temperament in everyone. That makes work more productive and life more fun.
1. Meet in person at least once
Face-to-face meetings are more likely to build relationships than meeting virtually, by phone or online. After making a connection in person we are inclined to bond with the group and want to follow through.
2. Establish rules of engagement
As a group create ground rules that involve rewards and penalties. If, for example, someone doesn’t meet a deadline and doesn’t explain in advance, offering an alternative to make up for the loss, will the group drop that person?
3. Agree on a few vital commitments
As a group, prioritize top goals and tasks. Rather than agreeing to many assignments, settle on a few that are important to each member. Success begets more success – and group esprit de corps. Over-committing then missing goals makes one feel guilty and avoid teammates. It brings down the whole team.
4. Create a visible task tracking system
Create a way that all committee members must record their progress on a task and view others’ progress. Such transparency affects each member’s reputation with others on the team. The most successful self-managed teams have a specific top goal and a short, prioritized list of concretely-described tasks – each with a lead person and timetable. All these elements are easily viewable by all members.
5. Provide an automatic reminder system
Create a way that members receive reminders for key deadlines, perhaps by email. This system may also include notification when other team members have completed tasks or provided information that’s needed for a member to take the next step.
This is my lightly-adapted version of Ken Thompson’s tips for “stopping team freeriding.” As the author of Bioteams and an expert on team dynamics and virtual collaboration Thompson has a treasure trove of Me2We tips including two of my favorites, Five tips for a perfect meeting and The seven beliefs of high performing teams. Hear Ken’s interview and discover more about the power of self-organizing (Peer2Peer) groups.
See links here http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2008/07/25/got-a-loafer-on-your-team-or-committee/
1. Meet in person at least once
Face-to-face meetings are more likely to build relationships than meeting virtually, by phone or online. After making a connection in person we are inclined to bond with the group and want to follow through.
2. Establish rules of engagement
As a group create ground rules that involve rewards and penalties. If, for example, someone doesn’t meet a deadline and doesn’t explain in advance, offering an alternative to make up for the loss, will the group drop that person?
3. Agree on a few vital commitments
As a group, prioritize top goals and tasks. Rather than agreeing to many assignments, settle on a few that are important to each member. Success begets more success – and group esprit de corps. Over-committing then missing goals makes one feel guilty and avoid teammates. It brings down the whole team.
4. Create a visible task tracking system
Create a way that all committee members must record their progress on a task and view others’ progress. Such transparency affects each member’s reputation with others on the team. The most successful self-managed teams have a specific top goal and a short, prioritized list of concretely-described tasks – each with a lead person and timetable. All these elements are easily viewable by all members.
5. Provide an automatic reminder system
Create a way that members receive reminders for key deadlines, perhaps by email. This system may also include notification when other team members have completed tasks or provided information that’s needed for a member to take the next step.
This is my lightly-adapted version of Ken Thompson’s tips for “stopping team freeriding.” As the author of Bioteams and an expert on team dynamics and virtual collaboration Thompson has a treasure trove of Me2We tips including two of my favorites, Five tips for a perfect meeting and The seven beliefs of high performing teams. Hear Ken’s interview and discover more about the power of self-organizing (Peer2Peer) groups.
See links here http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2008/07/25/got-a-loafer-on-your-team-or-committee/
Send a singing telegram via email.
Share your own lyrics. Make them up right now at your computer. It’s simple. Honest.
Ask Humphrey or Gina to sing them for you. (They’re rather eccentric yet fun.) Then make your friends laugh, smile … (or cry?) when they receive your singing telegram. Go ahead. It’s free at kakomessenger.
Sitting all by yourself in front of your computer too long? Here’s another musical vacation you
can take right now. Hear Bill Withers sing Lean on Me - just for you. He’s waiting over at songza and at last.fm, along with a legion of other legendary musicians.
After all, “music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life” or, uh, conjures up new ways of seeing the world.
Ask Humphrey or Gina to sing them for you. (They’re rather eccentric yet fun.) Then make your friends laugh, smile … (or cry?) when they receive your singing telegram. Go ahead. It’s free at kakomessenger.
Sitting all by yourself in front of your computer too long? Here’s another musical vacation you
can take right now. Hear Bill Withers sing Lean on Me - just for you. He’s waiting over at songza and at last.fm, along with a legion of other legendary musicians.
After all, “music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life” or, uh, conjures up new ways of seeing the world.
Attract Fans & Sales With Your Own Book Club
Authors’ alert: Try your version of Seth Godin’s newest crowd attractor that rocketed his book to the top ten bestsellers at Amazon. And the book isn’t even out yet.
Here’s what happened. About two months ago, he offered his fans the chance to be on the cover of his next book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. Those who were quick to act might (might!) be among the crowd of faces on the book.
Note: “Quick” evokes “scarcity,” which spurs us to act, according to Influence author, Robert Cialdini.
To further stoke his visibility and his advance sales of the book, yesterday Godin invited community-builders and marketers to meet each other over at his “private,” subscriber-based social network site, aka an online book club. Of course, even these ostensibly key influencers had to provide electronic proof that they’d pre-ordered a copy of the book at Amazon. That membership requirement certainly cements a SmartPartnership between the author and Amazon. Also, Seth’s social network site, aka book club was launched off the free provider, Ning.
Some are offended by Seth’s approach.
Yet, as Ron Hogan at Mediabistro suggests, it is a super quick way for an author to start and grow a book club and boost sales. Even less famous authors (such as the rest of us) can adapt this approach to entice our kind of readers to buy early, tell others and get to know each other online – thus building an active fan community to buy our future books.
(If politicans and pet stores can start book clubs, why not authors?) Finally, to cover your bases, create a book club page at Mahalo and Squidoo - and a write up at the still ungainly “steamroller” of an author-credited, wiki service, Knol.
See more at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2008/07/30/jumpstart-sales-with-your-own-book-club/
Here’s what happened. About two months ago, he offered his fans the chance to be on the cover of his next book, Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us. Those who were quick to act might (might!) be among the crowd of faces on the book.
Note: “Quick” evokes “scarcity,” which spurs us to act, according to Influence author, Robert Cialdini.
To further stoke his visibility and his advance sales of the book, yesterday Godin invited community-builders and marketers to meet each other over at his “private,” subscriber-based social network site, aka an online book club. Of course, even these ostensibly key influencers had to provide electronic proof that they’d pre-ordered a copy of the book at Amazon. That membership requirement certainly cements a SmartPartnership between the author and Amazon. Also, Seth’s social network site, aka book club was launched off the free provider, Ning.
Some are offended by Seth’s approach.
Yet, as Ron Hogan at Mediabistro suggests, it is a super quick way for an author to start and grow a book club and boost sales. Even less famous authors (such as the rest of us) can adapt this approach to entice our kind of readers to buy early, tell others and get to know each other online – thus building an active fan community to buy our future books.
(If politicans and pet stores can start book clubs, why not authors?) Finally, to cover your bases, create a book club page at Mahalo and Squidoo - and a write up at the still ungainly “steamroller” of an author-credited, wiki service, Knol.
See more at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2008/07/30/jumpstart-sales-with-your-own-book-club/
Thoughtful Ways to Use LinkedIn
Want to ask your colleagues a question as you research a project or when you need a recommendation? Have a strong aversion to the spamlike behavior that can happen at Facebook and other social media sites?
Find over 100 tips for tapping the Wisdom of the Crowds (people you know) - using LinkedIn - a “professional” rather than “social” site. Of course, the tips were collected in the same way.
LinkedIn and networking expert, Scott Allen recruited others to share their favorite methods in a group writing project he called “Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn.” Ideas poured in.
My favorite is Guy Kawasaki’s Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn. Here’s others I found especially helpful. Andrew Shaindlin discusses the Pros and Cons of LinkedIn for Alumni Groups. Diane K. Danielson offered ways for “Getting More Than Just Answers.” Jason Calacanis and Loren Baker describe how to use it for market research.
As a former journalist I appreciated Penelope Trunk’s 10 Ways Journalists Can Use LinkedIn. Elsewhere Leo Babauta shows how it can help your productivity. Allson Doyle notes it aids job hunting, and eHow shows how to create a great profile, find people you know and more.
There’s even way for public officials to use it. See the blog and brand new book, “I’m On LinkedIn - Now What? by Jason Alba. It was only last December when LinkedIn opened up to partner with other firms to generate more value for members.
How? By allowing companies to add LinkedIn features to their websites.
Here’s reassuring news. If people in your network do not live up to your values you can break the connection. How do you use LinkedIn? In this podcast hear Scott Allen offer fresh ways to succeed through partnering.
Find over 100 tips for tapping the Wisdom of the Crowds (people you know) - using LinkedIn - a “professional” rather than “social” site. Of course, the tips were collected in the same way.
LinkedIn and networking expert, Scott Allen recruited others to share their favorite methods in a group writing project he called “Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn.” Ideas poured in.
My favorite is Guy Kawasaki’s Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn. Here’s others I found especially helpful. Andrew Shaindlin discusses the Pros and Cons of LinkedIn for Alumni Groups. Diane K. Danielson offered ways for “Getting More Than Just Answers.” Jason Calacanis and Loren Baker describe how to use it for market research.
As a former journalist I appreciated Penelope Trunk’s 10 Ways Journalists Can Use LinkedIn. Elsewhere Leo Babauta shows how it can help your productivity. Allson Doyle notes it aids job hunting, and eHow shows how to create a great profile, find people you know and more.
There’s even way for public officials to use it. See the blog and brand new book, “I’m On LinkedIn - Now What? by Jason Alba. It was only last December when LinkedIn opened up to partner with other firms to generate more value for members.
How? By allowing companies to add LinkedIn features to their websites.
Here’s reassuring news. If people in your network do not live up to your values you can break the connection. How do you use LinkedIn? In this podcast hear Scott Allen offer fresh ways to succeed through partnering.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Your Gut Instincts & Ability to Get Along, a Quiz
Why do we instinctively like some people and find others irritating or worse?
What makes us agree, buy, help . . . or not? Do your gut instincts help or hinder your “LQ” – Likeability Quotient? From an expert on gut instincts, gain insights about how to say it better next time. Answer this quick nine question quiz and get some tips. Some of the answers may surprise you.
1. Do people get along better when talking to each other if they are facing
each other or if they are standing side by side?
2. Who tends to face the person with whom they are speaking (men or women) and who tends to stand side by side, facing more or less the same way (women or men)?
3. If you want to increase the chance of knowing if someone is lying to you, what is one helpful phenomenon to notice about that person’s face when he or she is talking to you?
4. If you want to keep someone’s attention, is it better to wear a patterned
shirt or blouse or a plain blouse or shirt?
5. What is the most directly emotional of all the senses, bypassing the
thinking facilities and causing a quicker, more intense reaction in the limbic
(emotions) system than any other sense?
6. Are you more likely to get someone to support you or buy something if you give them something up front, unasked, before you ask for the favor?
7. Who tends to maintain wider peripheral vision when entering a new place, men or women?
8. Who tends to be more specific in their descriptions, adults or children?
9. Of the previous eight questions, which is the one people are most likely to
ask for the answer to first, and if reading the questions in a group, are most
likely to comment on first?
~~~~~
Answers
1. People get along better when they “sidle”, stand or sit side by side rather than when they face each other.
2. Men are more likely to sidle than women.
3. Note the timing and duration of the first “reactive” expression on someone’s face when you think that person is not telling you the truth. When lying, most people can put an innocent expression on their faces, yet few (except pathological liars) will have the right timing or duration of that expression.
If you ignore the expression itself and, instead, consider whether the timing and duration of the expression seem natural, you’ll greatly increase your chances of knowing if that person is lying.
4. Wearing a plain, unpatterned shirt or blouse will increase the chances that the listener will hear you longer. A patterned top or ornate jewelry or loud tie will break up the listener’s attention span sooner, and that person is more likely to go on more “mental vacations” sooner.
5. Smell is the most directly emotional of the senses. The right natural scent can refresh or relax you and others in your home or work site. Vanilla, apple, and chocolate are the scents Americans most like.
6. Yes, up to 14 times more likely to get their support or a purchase. This gut instinct is often called “reciprocity reflex.” Learn more by reading influence by Robert Cialdini.
7. Women. That is why storeowners who serve men will increase their sales if they have prominent, eye-level signage over large displays where men will see the signage soon after entering the store.
8. Children are more vividly specific, hitting their prime around fourth grade and then beginning to speak in generalities, more like adults. A specific detail proves a general conclusion, not the other way around. Plus, specifics are more memorable and credible.
9. Question number 3.
It seems that we have an inordinate interest in lying.
~~~~~
Three related insights on instincts that may interest you:
Finding #1: “Move to Motivate”
MOTION
Motion is emotional. It increases the intensity of feeling about whatever is
happening.
Further, people remember more the things they dislike or fear that they
experience in motion, more than things they enjoy. Motion attracts attention and causes people to remember more of what’s happening and feel more strongly about it, for better or for worse.
Insight:
This is another justification for golf! Think of the memorability inherent in a golf swing. The more dimensions of motion involved (body moving up/down, left/right, backward/forward), the more memorable the motion.
Get others involved in motions with you that create good will: walking, sharing a meal, handing or receiving a gift, shaking hands, turning to face a new scene. You are more likely to literally get “in sync” (vital signs become more similar: eye pupil dilation, skin temperature, heartbeat) and to then get along.
Finding #2: “Deep Convictions”
PASSION
The more time, actions, or other effort someone has put into something,
someone, or some course of action, the more deeply that person will believe in
it, defend it, and work on it further.
Insight:
If you want more from another person, wait to ask until after she has invested more time, energy, money, or other resources. The more someone talks about it, repeats and elaborates it, writes it down, and explains it to others, the more deeply that person will believe it – and feel inclined to tell others. Imagine your customers raving about their experience with your product.
Finding #3: “True Timing”
LIKEABILITY
If a person likes the way he acts when he is around you, he often sees the
qualities in you that he most admires. The opposite is also true. Two universal truths: people like people who are like them, and people like people who like them.
Insight:
Pick the moments when someone feels most at ease and happy to move the relationship forward. Don’t make suggestions or requests when they are acting in an unbecoming way your efforts will only backfire. Praise the behavior you want to flourish. Don’t ask for more from someone until they have invested more time, money, other resources, or emotional “chits” in the relationship.
See more ideas ....
http://www.sayitbetter.com/meeting_planners.html
http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/
http://sayitbetter.typepad.com/say_it_better
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sayitbetter
What makes us agree, buy, help . . . or not? Do your gut instincts help or hinder your “LQ” – Likeability Quotient? From an expert on gut instincts, gain insights about how to say it better next time. Answer this quick nine question quiz and get some tips. Some of the answers may surprise you.
1. Do people get along better when talking to each other if they are facing
each other or if they are standing side by side?
2. Who tends to face the person with whom they are speaking (men or women) and who tends to stand side by side, facing more or less the same way (women or men)?
3. If you want to increase the chance of knowing if someone is lying to you, what is one helpful phenomenon to notice about that person’s face when he or she is talking to you?
4. If you want to keep someone’s attention, is it better to wear a patterned
shirt or blouse or a plain blouse or shirt?
5. What is the most directly emotional of all the senses, bypassing the
thinking facilities and causing a quicker, more intense reaction in the limbic
(emotions) system than any other sense?
6. Are you more likely to get someone to support you or buy something if you give them something up front, unasked, before you ask for the favor?
7. Who tends to maintain wider peripheral vision when entering a new place, men or women?
8. Who tends to be more specific in their descriptions, adults or children?
9. Of the previous eight questions, which is the one people are most likely to
ask for the answer to first, and if reading the questions in a group, are most
likely to comment on first?
~~~~~
Answers
1. People get along better when they “sidle”, stand or sit side by side rather than when they face each other.
2. Men are more likely to sidle than women.
3. Note the timing and duration of the first “reactive” expression on someone’s face when you think that person is not telling you the truth. When lying, most people can put an innocent expression on their faces, yet few (except pathological liars) will have the right timing or duration of that expression.
If you ignore the expression itself and, instead, consider whether the timing and duration of the expression seem natural, you’ll greatly increase your chances of knowing if that person is lying.
4. Wearing a plain, unpatterned shirt or blouse will increase the chances that the listener will hear you longer. A patterned top or ornate jewelry or loud tie will break up the listener’s attention span sooner, and that person is more likely to go on more “mental vacations” sooner.
5. Smell is the most directly emotional of the senses. The right natural scent can refresh or relax you and others in your home or work site. Vanilla, apple, and chocolate are the scents Americans most like.
6. Yes, up to 14 times more likely to get their support or a purchase. This gut instinct is often called “reciprocity reflex.” Learn more by reading influence by Robert Cialdini.
7. Women. That is why storeowners who serve men will increase their sales if they have prominent, eye-level signage over large displays where men will see the signage soon after entering the store.
8. Children are more vividly specific, hitting their prime around fourth grade and then beginning to speak in generalities, more like adults. A specific detail proves a general conclusion, not the other way around. Plus, specifics are more memorable and credible.
9. Question number 3.
It seems that we have an inordinate interest in lying.
~~~~~
Three related insights on instincts that may interest you:
Finding #1: “Move to Motivate”
MOTION
Motion is emotional. It increases the intensity of feeling about whatever is
happening.
Further, people remember more the things they dislike or fear that they
experience in motion, more than things they enjoy. Motion attracts attention and causes people to remember more of what’s happening and feel more strongly about it, for better or for worse.
Insight:
This is another justification for golf! Think of the memorability inherent in a golf swing. The more dimensions of motion involved (body moving up/down, left/right, backward/forward), the more memorable the motion.
Get others involved in motions with you that create good will: walking, sharing a meal, handing or receiving a gift, shaking hands, turning to face a new scene. You are more likely to literally get “in sync” (vital signs become more similar: eye pupil dilation, skin temperature, heartbeat) and to then get along.
Finding #2: “Deep Convictions”
PASSION
The more time, actions, or other effort someone has put into something,
someone, or some course of action, the more deeply that person will believe in
it, defend it, and work on it further.
Insight:
If you want more from another person, wait to ask until after she has invested more time, energy, money, or other resources. The more someone talks about it, repeats and elaborates it, writes it down, and explains it to others, the more deeply that person will believe it – and feel inclined to tell others. Imagine your customers raving about their experience with your product.
Finding #3: “True Timing”
LIKEABILITY
If a person likes the way he acts when he is around you, he often sees the
qualities in you that he most admires. The opposite is also true. Two universal truths: people like people who are like them, and people like people who like them.
Insight:
Pick the moments when someone feels most at ease and happy to move the relationship forward. Don’t make suggestions or requests when they are acting in an unbecoming way your efforts will only backfire. Praise the behavior you want to flourish. Don’t ask for more from someone until they have invested more time, money, other resources, or emotional “chits” in the relationship.
See more ideas ....
http://www.sayitbetter.com/meeting_planners.html
http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/
http://sayitbetter.typepad.com/say_it_better
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sayitbetter
Don't Worry, Be Happy
Take some of the stress out of your life. They don’t always work, yet what does?
1. Problems seldom exist at the level they're expressed. To resolve some conflicts, look for the problem that underlies what you're discussing. Ask yourself where the actual concern originates.
2. If you're involved in an argument lasting more than 10 minutes, stop and ask yourself, Are we arguing about the core disagreement or is there a deeper issue that we're not discussing?
3. You can't cultivate positive people with negative feedback. Give vivid, specific praise about your colleagues, and praise them in front of people who are important to them. Whatever behavior you praise, you encourage to flourish.
4. Make a habit of asking others about their interests before talking about your own. It shows respect for that person's feelings and needs. And it will lift your spirits as well as theirs. Go the extra mile and ask a follow-up question.
In so doing you learn more about the other person – and about yourself as you observe the part the conversation that most interested you to continue. That insight may carry you forward, away from the gray feelings.
5. Go slow to go fast. In any situation, help everyone involved feel comfortable with each other and the situation before proceeding further.
Here's to hearing your fresh ideas for harnessing the power of us in this flattening world over at this blog+podcast
http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/
1. Problems seldom exist at the level they're expressed. To resolve some conflicts, look for the problem that underlies what you're discussing. Ask yourself where the actual concern originates.
2. If you're involved in an argument lasting more than 10 minutes, stop and ask yourself, Are we arguing about the core disagreement or is there a deeper issue that we're not discussing?
3. You can't cultivate positive people with negative feedback. Give vivid, specific praise about your colleagues, and praise them in front of people who are important to them. Whatever behavior you praise, you encourage to flourish.
4. Make a habit of asking others about their interests before talking about your own. It shows respect for that person's feelings and needs. And it will lift your spirits as well as theirs. Go the extra mile and ask a follow-up question.
In so doing you learn more about the other person – and about yourself as you observe the part the conversation that most interested you to continue. That insight may carry you forward, away from the gray feelings.
5. Go slow to go fast. In any situation, help everyone involved feel comfortable with each other and the situation before proceeding further.
Here's to hearing your fresh ideas for harnessing the power of us in this flattening world over at this blog+podcast
http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/
Make Your Daily Interactions More Satisfying
Suppose a colleague gives you a compliment as you meet her in the hallway and then another person accidentally bumped you in passing. You will respond more quickly and strongly to being bumped than to being complimented, even if the person who knocked into you immediately apologizes.
You have little power over those instinctual reactions. In fact, your mood will be altered longer from a bump than a compliment and you will remember it longer.
Why?
Not because you are a negatively inclined person, but because your strongest, most primal instinct is for survival. That instinct is hardwired into your brain so that, even in modern circumstances, your swiftest, most pervasive reactions are to protect yourself from any sign of "danger."
All of your angry feelings are the visible surface of an underlying negative feeling such as hurt or irritation that stem from some early circumstance in your life where you felt in danger. The current source of your anger looks similar to that earlier time.
When you react negatively, even with a briefly hardened face or a sharp tone in one word, the other person instinctively escalates in a ping pong reaction back and forth. It's easier for an interaction to degenerate into a difficult time from one "bad" action than it is for the experience to rise from a positive action.
Since you can't re-wire your brain to change your gut instinctual reactions, you can compensate by appearing "safe" when you first meet and re-meet people.
Here's two valuable ways.
First, move and speak slower, lower and less at first so the other person can gain comfort and familiarity with the situation, even if he already knows you and has had positive past experiences with you. In the beginning, don't talk loud and quickly or move fast and frequently, especially with high, quick arm gestures.
Such gestures also rob you of the appearance of power. If your voice is lower and slower, your sentences shorter and your gestures are spare, then the other person will accept your more quick and direct body motions and verbal suggestions later on., even thought they probably won't be conscious of why.
Second, since people instinctively like people who are somehow like them, demonstrate the part of you which is most like them. Refer to common experiences, background or places.
Adjust your voice level and rate and amount and kind of body motion to become more like theirs. Children do this instinctively. Only as we get older do we lose the instinct to adapt to another's behavioral style.
Here are some other suggestions for gaining and holding another's attention.
1. Be vividly specific. A specific detail or example proves a general conclusion, not the reverse. A vivid, specific detail is memorable, while a general statement is less credible and easily forgotten. Ironically, most adult conversation and advertising is general. Children are more likely to be vividly specific and thus more memorable.
When you want to be heard and remembered, characterize your information or request with a vivid, specific detail, example, story or contrasting options. Involve words that relate to the senses. For example "beautiful color" is not as vivid as "blue" which is not as vivid as "cobalt blue."
2. Be "plainly clear." Avoid wearing patterned clothing or other detail on your clothing, especially on the upper half of the body, because it will shorten the attention span of the person with whom you are speaking.
3. Look for the underlying issue. When you are arguing for more than ten minutes, you are probably not discussing the real conflict and are thus unlikely to get it resolved in the discussion. Look for the underlying issue. Read Robert Bromson's idea-packed book, Dealing With Difficult people for ideas about how to recognize specific difficult behaviors and adopt behaviors to protect yourself from them.
4. Deepen their commitment before you ask for more. The more time, actions or other effort someone has put into something, someone or some course of action, the more deeply they believe in it, will defend it and will work on it some more. If you want more from the other person, wait until he has invested more time, energy, money or other resources to ask for it.
5. Bring out their best side. If a person likes the way he acts when he is around you, he often sees the qualities in you that he most admires.
The opposite is also true. Pick the moments when someone feels most at ease and happy, to move the relationship forward. Don't make suggestions or requests when they are acting in an unbecoming way. Your efforts will only backfire. Praise the behavior you want to flourish.
6. Move to motivate. Motion activates emotion and makes experiences more memorable. Motion attracts attention and causes people to remember more of what's happening and feel more strongly about it, for better or for worse.
Get others involved in motions with you that create goodwill: walking, sharing a meal, handing or receiving a gift, shaking hands, turning to face a new scene. You are more likely to literally get "in sync." That is, your vital signs become more similar: eye pupil dilation, skin temperature and heart beat.
You have little power over those instinctual reactions. In fact, your mood will be altered longer from a bump than a compliment and you will remember it longer.
Why?
Not because you are a negatively inclined person, but because your strongest, most primal instinct is for survival. That instinct is hardwired into your brain so that, even in modern circumstances, your swiftest, most pervasive reactions are to protect yourself from any sign of "danger."
All of your angry feelings are the visible surface of an underlying negative feeling such as hurt or irritation that stem from some early circumstance in your life where you felt in danger. The current source of your anger looks similar to that earlier time.
When you react negatively, even with a briefly hardened face or a sharp tone in one word, the other person instinctively escalates in a ping pong reaction back and forth. It's easier for an interaction to degenerate into a difficult time from one "bad" action than it is for the experience to rise from a positive action.
Since you can't re-wire your brain to change your gut instinctual reactions, you can compensate by appearing "safe" when you first meet and re-meet people.
Here's two valuable ways.
First, move and speak slower, lower and less at first so the other person can gain comfort and familiarity with the situation, even if he already knows you and has had positive past experiences with you. In the beginning, don't talk loud and quickly or move fast and frequently, especially with high, quick arm gestures.
Such gestures also rob you of the appearance of power. If your voice is lower and slower, your sentences shorter and your gestures are spare, then the other person will accept your more quick and direct body motions and verbal suggestions later on., even thought they probably won't be conscious of why.
Second, since people instinctively like people who are somehow like them, demonstrate the part of you which is most like them. Refer to common experiences, background or places.
Adjust your voice level and rate and amount and kind of body motion to become more like theirs. Children do this instinctively. Only as we get older do we lose the instinct to adapt to another's behavioral style.
Here are some other suggestions for gaining and holding another's attention.
1. Be vividly specific. A specific detail or example proves a general conclusion, not the reverse. A vivid, specific detail is memorable, while a general statement is less credible and easily forgotten. Ironically, most adult conversation and advertising is general. Children are more likely to be vividly specific and thus more memorable.
When you want to be heard and remembered, characterize your information or request with a vivid, specific detail, example, story or contrasting options. Involve words that relate to the senses. For example "beautiful color" is not as vivid as "blue" which is not as vivid as "cobalt blue."
2. Be "plainly clear." Avoid wearing patterned clothing or other detail on your clothing, especially on the upper half of the body, because it will shorten the attention span of the person with whom you are speaking.
3. Look for the underlying issue. When you are arguing for more than ten minutes, you are probably not discussing the real conflict and are thus unlikely to get it resolved in the discussion. Look for the underlying issue. Read Robert Bromson's idea-packed book, Dealing With Difficult people for ideas about how to recognize specific difficult behaviors and adopt behaviors to protect yourself from them.
4. Deepen their commitment before you ask for more. The more time, actions or other effort someone has put into something, someone or some course of action, the more deeply they believe in it, will defend it and will work on it some more. If you want more from the other person, wait until he has invested more time, energy, money or other resources to ask for it.
5. Bring out their best side. If a person likes the way he acts when he is around you, he often sees the qualities in you that he most admires.
The opposite is also true. Pick the moments when someone feels most at ease and happy, to move the relationship forward. Don't make suggestions or requests when they are acting in an unbecoming way. Your efforts will only backfire. Praise the behavior you want to flourish.
6. Move to motivate. Motion activates emotion and makes experiences more memorable. Motion attracts attention and causes people to remember more of what's happening and feel more strongly about it, for better or for worse.
Get others involved in motions with you that create goodwill: walking, sharing a meal, handing or receiving a gift, shaking hands, turning to face a new scene. You are more likely to literally get "in sync." That is, your vital signs become more similar: eye pupil dilation, skin temperature and heart beat.
Make Your Daily Interactions More Satisfying
Suppose a colleague gives you a compliment as you meet her in the hallway and then another person accidentally bumped you in passing. You will respond more quickly and strongly to being bumped than to being complimented, even if the person who knocked into you immediately apologizes. You have little power over those instinctual reactions. In fact, your mood will be altered longer from a bump than a compliment and you will remember it longer.
Why? Not because you are a negatively inclined person, but because your strongest, most primal instinct is for survival. That instinct is hardwired into your brain so that, even in modern circumstances, your swiftest, most pervasive reactions are to protect yourself from any sign of "danger." All of your angry feelings are the visible surface of an underlying negative feeling such as hurt or irritation that stem from some early circumstance in your life where you felt in danger. The current source of your anger looks similar to that earlier time.
When you react negatively, even with a briefly hardened face or a sharp tone in one word, the other person instinctively escalates in a ping pong reaction back and forth. It's easier for an interaction to degenerate into a difficult time from one "bad" action than it is for the experience to rise from a positive action.
Since you can't re-wire your brain to change your gut instinctual reactions, you can compensate by appearing "safe" when you first meet and re-meet people. Here's two valuable ways. First, move and speak slower, lower and less at first so the other person can gain comfort and familiarity with the situation, even if he already knows you and has had positive past experiences with you. In the beginning, don't talk loud and quickly or move fast and frequently, especially with high, quick arm gestures.
Such gestures also rob you of the appearance of power. If your voice is lower and slower, your sentences shorter and your gestures are spare, then the other person will accept your more quick and direct body motions and verbal suggestions later on., even thought they probably won't be conscious of why.
Second, since people instinctively like people who are somehow like them, demonstrate the part of you which is most like them. Refer to common experiences, background or places. Adjust your voice level and rate and amount and kind of body motion to become more like theirs. Children do this instinctively. Only as we get older do we lose the instinct to adapt to another's behavioral style.
Here are some other suggestions for gaining and holding another's attention.
1. Be vividly specific. A specific detail or example proves a general conclusion, not the reverse. A vivid, specific detail is memorable, while a general statement is less credible and easily forgotten. Ironically, most adult conversation and advertising is general. Children are more likely to be vividly specific and thus more memorable.
When you want to be heard and remembered, characterize your information or request with a vivid, specific detail, example, story or contrasting options. Involve words that relate to the senses. For example "beautiful color" is not as vivid as "blue" which is not as vivid as "cobalt blue."
2. Be "plainly clear." Avoid wearing patterned clothing or other detail on your clothing, especially on the upper half of the body, because it will shorten the attention span of the person with whom you are speaking.
3. Look for the underlying issue. When you are arguing for more than ten minutes, you are probably not discussing the real conflict and are thus unlikely to get it resolved in the discussion. Look for the underlying issue. Read Robert Bromson's idea-packed book, Dealing With Difficult people for ideas about how to recognize specific difficult behaviors and adopt behaviors to protect yourself from them.
4. Deepen their commitment before you ask for more. The more time, actions or other effort someone has put into something, someone or some course of action, the more deeply they believe in it, will defend it and will work on it some more. If you want more from the other person, wait until he has invested more time, energy, money or other resources to ask for it.
5. Bring out their best side. If a person likes the way he acts when he is around you, he often sees the qualities in you that he most admires.
The opposite is also true. Pick the moments when someone feels most at ease and happy, to move the relationship forward. Don't make suggestions or requests when they are acting in an unbecoming way. Your efforts will only backfire. Praise the behavior you want to flourish.
6. Move to motivate. Motion activates emotion and makes experiences more memorable. Motion attracts attention and causes people to remember more of what's happening and feel more strongly about it, for better or for worse.
Get others involved in motions with you that create goodwill: walking, sharing a meal, handing or receiving a gift, shaking hands, turning to face a new scene. You are more likely to literally get "in sync." That is, your vital signs become more similar: eye pupil dilation, skin temperature and heart beat.
Why? Not because you are a negatively inclined person, but because your strongest, most primal instinct is for survival. That instinct is hardwired into your brain so that, even in modern circumstances, your swiftest, most pervasive reactions are to protect yourself from any sign of "danger." All of your angry feelings are the visible surface of an underlying negative feeling such as hurt or irritation that stem from some early circumstance in your life where you felt in danger. The current source of your anger looks similar to that earlier time.
When you react negatively, even with a briefly hardened face or a sharp tone in one word, the other person instinctively escalates in a ping pong reaction back and forth. It's easier for an interaction to degenerate into a difficult time from one "bad" action than it is for the experience to rise from a positive action.
Since you can't re-wire your brain to change your gut instinctual reactions, you can compensate by appearing "safe" when you first meet and re-meet people. Here's two valuable ways. First, move and speak slower, lower and less at first so the other person can gain comfort and familiarity with the situation, even if he already knows you and has had positive past experiences with you. In the beginning, don't talk loud and quickly or move fast and frequently, especially with high, quick arm gestures.
Such gestures also rob you of the appearance of power. If your voice is lower and slower, your sentences shorter and your gestures are spare, then the other person will accept your more quick and direct body motions and verbal suggestions later on., even thought they probably won't be conscious of why.
Second, since people instinctively like people who are somehow like them, demonstrate the part of you which is most like them. Refer to common experiences, background or places. Adjust your voice level and rate and amount and kind of body motion to become more like theirs. Children do this instinctively. Only as we get older do we lose the instinct to adapt to another's behavioral style.
Here are some other suggestions for gaining and holding another's attention.
1. Be vividly specific. A specific detail or example proves a general conclusion, not the reverse. A vivid, specific detail is memorable, while a general statement is less credible and easily forgotten. Ironically, most adult conversation and advertising is general. Children are more likely to be vividly specific and thus more memorable.
When you want to be heard and remembered, characterize your information or request with a vivid, specific detail, example, story or contrasting options. Involve words that relate to the senses. For example "beautiful color" is not as vivid as "blue" which is not as vivid as "cobalt blue."
2. Be "plainly clear." Avoid wearing patterned clothing or other detail on your clothing, especially on the upper half of the body, because it will shorten the attention span of the person with whom you are speaking.
3. Look for the underlying issue. When you are arguing for more than ten minutes, you are probably not discussing the real conflict and are thus unlikely to get it resolved in the discussion. Look for the underlying issue. Read Robert Bromson's idea-packed book, Dealing With Difficult people for ideas about how to recognize specific difficult behaviors and adopt behaviors to protect yourself from them.
4. Deepen their commitment before you ask for more. The more time, actions or other effort someone has put into something, someone or some course of action, the more deeply they believe in it, will defend it and will work on it some more. If you want more from the other person, wait until he has invested more time, energy, money or other resources to ask for it.
5. Bring out their best side. If a person likes the way he acts when he is around you, he often sees the qualities in you that he most admires.
The opposite is also true. Pick the moments when someone feels most at ease and happy, to move the relationship forward. Don't make suggestions or requests when they are acting in an unbecoming way. Your efforts will only backfire. Praise the behavior you want to flourish.
6. Move to motivate. Motion activates emotion and makes experiences more memorable. Motion attracts attention and causes people to remember more of what's happening and feel more strongly about it, for better or for worse.
Get others involved in motions with you that create goodwill: walking, sharing a meal, handing or receiving a gift, shaking hands, turning to face a new scene. You are more likely to literally get "in sync." That is, your vital signs become more similar: eye pupil dilation, skin temperature and heart beat.
Creating a Positive First Impression on the Stage or Anywhere
Last month your colleague asked you to present your team's ideas for streamlining some of the tasks in your unit. The meeting is today. You're thoroughly prepared and confident that your team's ideas are worthwhile.
When it's time to make your presentation, you speak rapidly and profusely, waving your hands and arms for emphasis. When you sit, you sit still, smiling and looking at other people in the meeting. When the meeting's over, you're surprised to learn that almost nobody remembers your ideas or likes the ones they can recall.
As this scenario makes clear, first impressions are crucial. You make your first impression with other people within 7 seconds, and that's the one they'll carry away.
The way you gesture, sit, and smile can make the difference between success and failure in any situation. Research proves that hundreds of subtle, but important, nonverbal cues strongly influence how others perceive us: weak, powerful, credible, untrustworthy, aggressive, or passive.
Nonverbal communication is an elaborate code written nowhere yet understood by all. The way you move may provide the single most powerful impression you'll make.
This article will help you understand how to make a solid and credible first impression. But first, let's take a look at what you might be doing wrong.
Gender cues
Researchers say that the fewer hand and body gestures you make, the more powerful, deliberate, credible, and intelligent you're perceived to be. Women and men display different nonverbal communication. For example, in a videotaped study of how women and men entered a room to a meeting, the women exhibited an average of 27 different major movements; the men, only 12.
A woman might take off her coat, set down her files, adjust her hair and clothing, pull items from her purse, and so on. Observers of the videotape believed that women took longer to be composed than men, distracting attention from what they said in the meeting.
In conversations, women tend to "hand dance" when making a point. They may feel they're just being expressive, but they're really leaking emotion-a distraction from overall impact.
Ever wonder why men are more likely to be perceived as leaders than women? They tend to use fewer, lower, and slower movements. And most women who are leaders take the same less-is-more approach to body language. Less is more
Every movement you make should count. If you move too much, consider going on a "body motion reduction diet." Lower and slow down your movements to reinforce an impression of deliberateness and thoughtfulness.
Less is also more when it comes to talking. Listen more. Speak less. Ask pertinent questions; don't add filler conversation. Don't be afraid of silence. Lean slightly forward, occasionally paraphrasing the other person's comments and using her name. Don't fidget or look away.
Space issues
Along with slow movements, the way you use your space can make a difference. A leader takes up more space than others. For example, in a group setting where people are seated, a leader will tilt slightly forward, with elbows on the chair or table, appearing relaxed. By taking up more space, she appears to be taking charge.
Many people who feel powerless tend to draw their bodies in toward themselves, sit straight up, hold their arms close to their body, and keep their legs tight together. They'll either make too many motions or none at all.
Getting it right
Here are some tips to improve your body language.
Be asymmetrical If you were to take a photograph of a leader at rest and cut her in half, the left half would differ from the right. For example, a leader will rest her chin on one hand, not two; she'll cross her leg at the knee, not the ankle; she'll gesture with one arm, not both. People who are in symmetrical positions take up less space and have a smaller presence. An asymmetrical position conveys that a person is relaxed, self-assured, and credible.
Practice. Power building is projecting, and you can become what you practice projecting.
Thoughtfully and deliberately, you can hone your best first and lasting impression by practicing these tips, one at a time. And remember, your actions really do speak louder than your words.
When it's time to make your presentation, you speak rapidly and profusely, waving your hands and arms for emphasis. When you sit, you sit still, smiling and looking at other people in the meeting. When the meeting's over, you're surprised to learn that almost nobody remembers your ideas or likes the ones they can recall.
As this scenario makes clear, first impressions are crucial. You make your first impression with other people within 7 seconds, and that's the one they'll carry away.
The way you gesture, sit, and smile can make the difference between success and failure in any situation. Research proves that hundreds of subtle, but important, nonverbal cues strongly influence how others perceive us: weak, powerful, credible, untrustworthy, aggressive, or passive.
Nonverbal communication is an elaborate code written nowhere yet understood by all. The way you move may provide the single most powerful impression you'll make.
This article will help you understand how to make a solid and credible first impression. But first, let's take a look at what you might be doing wrong.
Gender cues
Researchers say that the fewer hand and body gestures you make, the more powerful, deliberate, credible, and intelligent you're perceived to be. Women and men display different nonverbal communication. For example, in a videotaped study of how women and men entered a room to a meeting, the women exhibited an average of 27 different major movements; the men, only 12.
A woman might take off her coat, set down her files, adjust her hair and clothing, pull items from her purse, and so on. Observers of the videotape believed that women took longer to be composed than men, distracting attention from what they said in the meeting.
In conversations, women tend to "hand dance" when making a point. They may feel they're just being expressive, but they're really leaking emotion-a distraction from overall impact.
Ever wonder why men are more likely to be perceived as leaders than women? They tend to use fewer, lower, and slower movements. And most women who are leaders take the same less-is-more approach to body language. Less is more
Every movement you make should count. If you move too much, consider going on a "body motion reduction diet." Lower and slow down your movements to reinforce an impression of deliberateness and thoughtfulness.
Less is also more when it comes to talking. Listen more. Speak less. Ask pertinent questions; don't add filler conversation. Don't be afraid of silence. Lean slightly forward, occasionally paraphrasing the other person's comments and using her name. Don't fidget or look away.
Space issues
Along with slow movements, the way you use your space can make a difference. A leader takes up more space than others. For example, in a group setting where people are seated, a leader will tilt slightly forward, with elbows on the chair or table, appearing relaxed. By taking up more space, she appears to be taking charge.
Many people who feel powerless tend to draw their bodies in toward themselves, sit straight up, hold their arms close to their body, and keep their legs tight together. They'll either make too many motions or none at all.
Getting it right
Here are some tips to improve your body language.
Be asymmetrical If you were to take a photograph of a leader at rest and cut her in half, the left half would differ from the right. For example, a leader will rest her chin on one hand, not two; she'll cross her leg at the knee, not the ankle; she'll gesture with one arm, not both. People who are in symmetrical positions take up less space and have a smaller presence. An asymmetrical position conveys that a person is relaxed, self-assured, and credible.
Practice. Power building is projecting, and you can become what you practice projecting.
Thoughtfully and deliberately, you can hone your best first and lasting impression by practicing these tips, one at a time. And remember, your actions really do speak louder than your words.
Can You Keep Your Feelings to Yourself?
Actions often speak louder than words.
In fact, they usually precede your words as you walk into view to meet someone. Because light travels faster than sound, people respond more quickly to what they see than what they hear from you. Thus, the way you move and gesture has a huge impact on how people literally see you in that first 7 to 10 seconds that Americans now take to develop a first impression of others.
To establish a first impression of comfort and credibility, remember these three words: lower, slower, and less.
When you first meet, someone talk and move less, with a lower and slower voice rate and level and fewer gestures. You don't have to look comatose, just not speedy. This serves two purposes. First, people subconsciously associate self-confidence and empathy with a slower body style, although it has no provable relationship to these human qualities. Second, humans, like all other animals, need to feel comfortable in a new situation before they can hear other people and begin to form positive feelings toward them.
The most reliable way to feel more comfortable is to get "in sync" with others: a two-step dance. First, minimize your movements and voice in the beginning. This gives others less "data" to process so they can get comfortable with you more quickly. Then, bring out the part of you that looks and sounds most like the person you are with.
Why? Because people are most comfortable with and favorably disposed toward people who look “right” — like them. Although you can't make many changes in the four main ways we are either similar or different (age, sex, ethnicity, and size), you can become more like another person. Children do this instinctively. As adults, we have lost the instinct to get into sync with others, except in the thrall of early romantic love.
Your every move is telling the world what you expect from it.
In fact, as adults, we tend to act more different when we are around people unlike us, thus accentuating our differences and further increasing our sense of discomfort, distrust, and potential for conflict.
How can you become more like someone else? By making your voice rate, volume, and volubility and your number and kind of gestures and other body movements approximate theirs.
Curious about how to read others better? Conversely, would you like some insights on how to cover your feelings when you want to keep them private from others who are around you?
Here's a place to begin. The expression on your face might reveal how you feel, but your body language indicates the intensity of that feeling. We literally leak — to use the scientific term — our feelings. In fact, a system for recording body movement for study (the Effort Shape System) is derived from dance choreography notation and offers a way to attempt to understand which sequences of gesture have which meaning in which cultures.
Some gestures are nearly universal in meaning. For example, watch men in the company of other men they do not like. Their posture becomes more strained, tense, and often rigid. On the other hand, women tend to assume an over-relaxed position with people they dislike.
Body Signs and Their Possible Meaning
Follow this guide to observe physical changes in someone else and discern their possible emotional meaning. Remember, these indicators are not true for everyone.
Sweating: Might indicate an increase in some emotional feeling.
Blinking more: Might indicate an increase in some emotional feeling.
Dilated pupils: Often indicates arousal or fear.
Blushing: Might signal embarrassment, shame, anger, or guilt.
Talking louder and faster: Usually signals anger, fear, or other excitement.
Talking slower and softer: Might signal sadness or boredom.
Body gesturing: Signals a negative emotion, usually fear or anger.
Breathing fast and shallow: Indicates the presence of emotion.
Are You Out on a Limb?
Gestures are emblems of feelings. Using too many gestures usually takes away from the potency of your natural presence, just as talking high, fast, loud or at great length diminishes your power and credibility.
Most people cannot help “leaking” their feelings. Fortunately, few of us are attuned to noticing the often subtle signals that indicate strong emotion in others. Or we misread the signals.
Don’t assume that someone else’s gestures have the same meaning as they would if you were to make them. The only truly universal gesture is the upright open palm, facing away from the person, used to fend off others.
As in all body motion, we reflect an aura of self-assurance through fewer, slower, lower arm gestures. You might find that reducing your gestures and other body movements does actually keep you more calm and able to focus.
In fact, they usually precede your words as you walk into view to meet someone. Because light travels faster than sound, people respond more quickly to what they see than what they hear from you. Thus, the way you move and gesture has a huge impact on how people literally see you in that first 7 to 10 seconds that Americans now take to develop a first impression of others.
To establish a first impression of comfort and credibility, remember these three words: lower, slower, and less.
When you first meet, someone talk and move less, with a lower and slower voice rate and level and fewer gestures. You don't have to look comatose, just not speedy. This serves two purposes. First, people subconsciously associate self-confidence and empathy with a slower body style, although it has no provable relationship to these human qualities. Second, humans, like all other animals, need to feel comfortable in a new situation before they can hear other people and begin to form positive feelings toward them.
The most reliable way to feel more comfortable is to get "in sync" with others: a two-step dance. First, minimize your movements and voice in the beginning. This gives others less "data" to process so they can get comfortable with you more quickly. Then, bring out the part of you that looks and sounds most like the person you are with.
Why? Because people are most comfortable with and favorably disposed toward people who look “right” — like them. Although you can't make many changes in the four main ways we are either similar or different (age, sex, ethnicity, and size), you can become more like another person. Children do this instinctively. As adults, we have lost the instinct to get into sync with others, except in the thrall of early romantic love.
Your every move is telling the world what you expect from it.
In fact, as adults, we tend to act more different when we are around people unlike us, thus accentuating our differences and further increasing our sense of discomfort, distrust, and potential for conflict.
How can you become more like someone else? By making your voice rate, volume, and volubility and your number and kind of gestures and other body movements approximate theirs.
Curious about how to read others better? Conversely, would you like some insights on how to cover your feelings when you want to keep them private from others who are around you?
Here's a place to begin. The expression on your face might reveal how you feel, but your body language indicates the intensity of that feeling. We literally leak — to use the scientific term — our feelings. In fact, a system for recording body movement for study (the Effort Shape System) is derived from dance choreography notation and offers a way to attempt to understand which sequences of gesture have which meaning in which cultures.
Some gestures are nearly universal in meaning. For example, watch men in the company of other men they do not like. Their posture becomes more strained, tense, and often rigid. On the other hand, women tend to assume an over-relaxed position with people they dislike.
Body Signs and Their Possible Meaning
Follow this guide to observe physical changes in someone else and discern their possible emotional meaning. Remember, these indicators are not true for everyone.
Sweating: Might indicate an increase in some emotional feeling.
Blinking more: Might indicate an increase in some emotional feeling.
Dilated pupils: Often indicates arousal or fear.
Blushing: Might signal embarrassment, shame, anger, or guilt.
Talking louder and faster: Usually signals anger, fear, or other excitement.
Talking slower and softer: Might signal sadness or boredom.
Body gesturing: Signals a negative emotion, usually fear or anger.
Breathing fast and shallow: Indicates the presence of emotion.
Are You Out on a Limb?
Gestures are emblems of feelings. Using too many gestures usually takes away from the potency of your natural presence, just as talking high, fast, loud or at great length diminishes your power and credibility.
Most people cannot help “leaking” their feelings. Fortunately, few of us are attuned to noticing the often subtle signals that indicate strong emotion in others. Or we misread the signals.
Don’t assume that someone else’s gestures have the same meaning as they would if you were to make them. The only truly universal gesture is the upright open palm, facing away from the person, used to fend off others.
As in all body motion, we reflect an aura of self-assurance through fewer, slower, lower arm gestures. You might find that reducing your gestures and other body movements does actually keep you more calm and able to focus.
What Are You Telling the World?”
The secret is all in understanding a code.
It is a most elaborate code that is written nowhere,
known by none, and yet understood by all. That secret
is how we tell each other, without words, what
we really feel.
How do other people perceive you, especially upon first meeting you face-to-face?
How well do you anticipate another person’s discomfort before that person freezes up and becomes paralyzed, withdrawn or even destructive in a situation?
Whichever side of the table you are on, these skills are crucial to your ability to lead, mentor or be a “MVP” valuable team player with your staff, vendors and customers.
Whether you making a presentation or listening, the boss or support person, being interviewed for a job or conducting an interview, selling or trying to decide whether to buy, your ability to project a comfortable confidence and approachability -- and to detect another’s degree of comfort - will always play a huge role in your ability to sell, lead or otherwise get things done - with others.
Early Warning Signs of Increasing Emotional Intensity
Here are some ways to observe increased emotion. Learn to look out for them in yourself as well as in others.
Sweating: Might indicate an increase in some emotional feeling.
Blinking more: Might indicate an increase in some emotional feeling.
Dilated pupils: Often indicates arousal or fear.
Blushing: Might signal embarrassment, shame, anger, or guilt.
Talking louder and faster: Usually signals anger, fear, or other excitement.
Talking slower and softer: Might signal sadness or boredom.
Body gesturing: Signals a negative emotion, usually fear or anger.
Breathing fast and shallow: Indicates the presence of emotion.
Are You Out on a Limb?
Gestures are emblems of feelings. Using too many gestures usually takes away from the potency of your natural presence, just as talking high, fast, loud or at great length diminishes your power and credibility.
Most people cannot help “leaking” their feelings. Fortunately, few of us are attuned to noticing the subtle signals that indicate strong emotion in others. Or we misread the signals.
Your body is a hologram of your being; a three-dimensional movie that is constantly running, showing others how you feel about yourself and the world. As you walk through life, is your body saying what your words are saying? Your body is a three-dimensional "full-motion" billboard to the rest of the world. Even if people are consciously reading your body language, they subconsciously react to your body signals.
Tour Your Body for Vital Signs
For example, if you are literally uptight – rigid in any part of your body, especially your face, where most people focus most of their attention in conversation – people will instinctively resist or react against you and your comments. This phenomenon is akin to bounding a hard rubber ball on a concrete surface and then on a soft carpet. The ball bounces higher and faster against the hard surface than the soft one, of course, just as others react more against your "hardened surface."
Suggestion: Whenever you are entering a potentially volatile or even new situation, loosen up physically. Walk, stretch, and work on the areas where you tend to hold most of your tension.
Probably – like many conscientious, hard-working people – you hold your shoulders higher and slightly more forward than is natural, with one of the tendons in your neck tightened up even more than the other. If someone can give you a quick 10- to 15-minute shoulder and neck massage, you will enter a situation more relaxed and others will respond more softly to you.
This is a good time to get acquainted with your body again, as you were as a child. If you don't know where you hold your tension, and most people don't, take a tour of your body so you can know what needs the most loosening – and exercise.
Are you shouldering the world's responsibilities, or perpetually drooping? In your determined drive toward success, do you plant your feet solidly on the ground in a life gesture of hostility, defiance, or taking ground?
Perhaps you have a forward-leaning posture, with your head tilted slightly forward, as if ready to spring into action, actually expressing a lifelong pattern of flight away from psychologically threatening situations when you thought it was part of your makeup to leap forward to new opportunities.
To be depressed is, in fact, to press against yourself. To be closed off is to hold your muscles rigid against the world.
Being open is being soft, with no instinctive muscle-clenching, such as the jaw-tightening that is a growing pattern in Americans, even into their sleep. Hardness is being uptight, cold, separate, giving yourself and others a hard time. Softness is synonymous with pleasure, warmth, flowing, being alive, drawing other people toward you rather than forcing them away.
Are you itching to get at someone? Is a colleague a pain in the neck? Are you sore about something? What is your aching back trying to tell you? Is there someone or something on your back? What about your ulcer, allergy, or muscle spasms? Is there someone you cannot stomach? What is it that you would like to get off your chest, or your back?
Your body speaks to you all of the time, telling you your own needs. Listen to it. It is your free and most sophisticated medical feedback testing system, continuously showing you your inner tensions, state of mind, and habitual life attitudes.
When you are misaligned and tense, you expend outrageous sums of extra energy in the everyday gestures of life. Because the body is a high-viscosity substance that is 60–80% water, your bones are floating in a relatively fluid environment. Over time, despite that apparent fluidity, you have tightened the muscles around every major experience of pain, fear, or anger.
In Western society, we usually hold the tension somewhere in our upper bodies, whereas in many Eastern cultures, the tension tends to be held in the lower body.
We all hold great muscle tension around certain bones in blind remembrance of fearful events, long after the actual events are probably long forgotten. You continue to tighten these muscles each time you think you are experiencing similar situations, thus guaranteeing that you make your pattern of uptightness increasingly habitual, until it becomes an almost permanent condition you no longer recognize as not normal.
Ah, the misleading appearance of maturity. You might never recall what initially made you afraid, but you can note where your body reacted to protect itself. Then spend more time in your exercise and massage or other bodywork to relax and loosen those muscle groups.
We go through life making decisions, closing down and limiting ourselves unconsciously. If you don't begin a regular practice of exercise and stretching, you are guaranteed to lose mobility sooner as you age, robbing yourself of the most positive and alive present you can offer the world every day – a loose and relaxed presence.
Stay open literally by getting in motion more frequently. Stand and stretch at least every twenty minutes when you are sitting and working. Try to walk, hopefully in sync with someone else, in fresh air and sunlight, at least thirty minutes a day. As Dr. Dean Ornish wrote in his most recent book, Love and Survival: The Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy, our survival depends on the healing power of love.
One of the safest and most natural ways to move closer to others is to walk with them. Walk farther to the restaurant. Walk and talk on the way to the meeting. Walk with your loved one, rather than sitting at home, to come down from your day together. Motion is emotional and makes every event more vivid and memorable. Literally move toward the one you want in your life and loosen up together.
Your life could depend on it.
Here's to hearing your fresh ideas for harnessing the power of us in this flattening world over at this blog+podcast
http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/
It is a most elaborate code that is written nowhere,
known by none, and yet understood by all. That secret
is how we tell each other, without words, what
we really feel.
How do other people perceive you, especially upon first meeting you face-to-face?
How well do you anticipate another person’s discomfort before that person freezes up and becomes paralyzed, withdrawn or even destructive in a situation?
Whichever side of the table you are on, these skills are crucial to your ability to lead, mentor or be a “MVP” valuable team player with your staff, vendors and customers.
Whether you making a presentation or listening, the boss or support person, being interviewed for a job or conducting an interview, selling or trying to decide whether to buy, your ability to project a comfortable confidence and approachability -- and to detect another’s degree of comfort - will always play a huge role in your ability to sell, lead or otherwise get things done - with others.
Early Warning Signs of Increasing Emotional Intensity
Here are some ways to observe increased emotion. Learn to look out for them in yourself as well as in others.
Sweating: Might indicate an increase in some emotional feeling.
Blinking more: Might indicate an increase in some emotional feeling.
Dilated pupils: Often indicates arousal or fear.
Blushing: Might signal embarrassment, shame, anger, or guilt.
Talking louder and faster: Usually signals anger, fear, or other excitement.
Talking slower and softer: Might signal sadness or boredom.
Body gesturing: Signals a negative emotion, usually fear or anger.
Breathing fast and shallow: Indicates the presence of emotion.
Are You Out on a Limb?
Gestures are emblems of feelings. Using too many gestures usually takes away from the potency of your natural presence, just as talking high, fast, loud or at great length diminishes your power and credibility.
Most people cannot help “leaking” their feelings. Fortunately, few of us are attuned to noticing the subtle signals that indicate strong emotion in others. Or we misread the signals.
Your body is a hologram of your being; a three-dimensional movie that is constantly running, showing others how you feel about yourself and the world. As you walk through life, is your body saying what your words are saying? Your body is a three-dimensional "full-motion" billboard to the rest of the world. Even if people are consciously reading your body language, they subconsciously react to your body signals.
Tour Your Body for Vital Signs
For example, if you are literally uptight – rigid in any part of your body, especially your face, where most people focus most of their attention in conversation – people will instinctively resist or react against you and your comments. This phenomenon is akin to bounding a hard rubber ball on a concrete surface and then on a soft carpet. The ball bounces higher and faster against the hard surface than the soft one, of course, just as others react more against your "hardened surface."
Suggestion: Whenever you are entering a potentially volatile or even new situation, loosen up physically. Walk, stretch, and work on the areas where you tend to hold most of your tension.
Probably – like many conscientious, hard-working people – you hold your shoulders higher and slightly more forward than is natural, with one of the tendons in your neck tightened up even more than the other. If someone can give you a quick 10- to 15-minute shoulder and neck massage, you will enter a situation more relaxed and others will respond more softly to you.
This is a good time to get acquainted with your body again, as you were as a child. If you don't know where you hold your tension, and most people don't, take a tour of your body so you can know what needs the most loosening – and exercise.
Are you shouldering the world's responsibilities, or perpetually drooping? In your determined drive toward success, do you plant your feet solidly on the ground in a life gesture of hostility, defiance, or taking ground?
Perhaps you have a forward-leaning posture, with your head tilted slightly forward, as if ready to spring into action, actually expressing a lifelong pattern of flight away from psychologically threatening situations when you thought it was part of your makeup to leap forward to new opportunities.
To be depressed is, in fact, to press against yourself. To be closed off is to hold your muscles rigid against the world.
Being open is being soft, with no instinctive muscle-clenching, such as the jaw-tightening that is a growing pattern in Americans, even into their sleep. Hardness is being uptight, cold, separate, giving yourself and others a hard time. Softness is synonymous with pleasure, warmth, flowing, being alive, drawing other people toward you rather than forcing them away.
Are you itching to get at someone? Is a colleague a pain in the neck? Are you sore about something? What is your aching back trying to tell you? Is there someone or something on your back? What about your ulcer, allergy, or muscle spasms? Is there someone you cannot stomach? What is it that you would like to get off your chest, or your back?
Your body speaks to you all of the time, telling you your own needs. Listen to it. It is your free and most sophisticated medical feedback testing system, continuously showing you your inner tensions, state of mind, and habitual life attitudes.
When you are misaligned and tense, you expend outrageous sums of extra energy in the everyday gestures of life. Because the body is a high-viscosity substance that is 60–80% water, your bones are floating in a relatively fluid environment. Over time, despite that apparent fluidity, you have tightened the muscles around every major experience of pain, fear, or anger.
In Western society, we usually hold the tension somewhere in our upper bodies, whereas in many Eastern cultures, the tension tends to be held in the lower body.
We all hold great muscle tension around certain bones in blind remembrance of fearful events, long after the actual events are probably long forgotten. You continue to tighten these muscles each time you think you are experiencing similar situations, thus guaranteeing that you make your pattern of uptightness increasingly habitual, until it becomes an almost permanent condition you no longer recognize as not normal.
Ah, the misleading appearance of maturity. You might never recall what initially made you afraid, but you can note where your body reacted to protect itself. Then spend more time in your exercise and massage or other bodywork to relax and loosen those muscle groups.
We go through life making decisions, closing down and limiting ourselves unconsciously. If you don't begin a regular practice of exercise and stretching, you are guaranteed to lose mobility sooner as you age, robbing yourself of the most positive and alive present you can offer the world every day – a loose and relaxed presence.
Stay open literally by getting in motion more frequently. Stand and stretch at least every twenty minutes when you are sitting and working. Try to walk, hopefully in sync with someone else, in fresh air and sunlight, at least thirty minutes a day. As Dr. Dean Ornish wrote in his most recent book, Love and Survival: The Scientific Basis for the Healing Power of Intimacy, our survival depends on the healing power of love.
One of the safest and most natural ways to move closer to others is to walk with them. Walk farther to the restaurant. Walk and talk on the way to the meeting. Walk with your loved one, rather than sitting at home, to come down from your day together. Motion is emotional and makes every event more vivid and memorable. Literally move toward the one you want in your life and loosen up together.
Your life could depend on it.
Here's to hearing your fresh ideas for harnessing the power of us in this flattening world over at this blog+podcast
http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/
We Are All Literally Two-Faced
“Your face is my map to your life.”
- Houdini, magician
We are all literally and unwittingly two-faced. To learn more about how you present yourself to the world, and your underlying, more “private” feelings, you just have to look yourself in the face. What to get out a mirror now, before you read further? Do you attract or alienate your insurance prospects and longtime staff?
You constantly present two aspects of yourself, on the two sides of your face. Recent research on the different functions of the left and right sides of the brain helps to explain why this is so. The two, vertical halves of the face are each affected by the nerves of the opposite side of the brain and show the world different parts of how you feel.
In fact, the two sides of your face, like the two sides of your body -- -the left and the right -- are usually asymmetrical and unequal in proportion. Look at yourself in the mirror -- full-face and full length -- to see the differences.
In short, your face is your shorthand to your body language.
Your expressions, in repose, are icons of your attitudes toward life.
The left side is your more “private” part of your personality and your right is the more “public” side of your face. The left often looks less happy than the right. Most subjects who have been analyzed projected their wish images upon their left side of their face and their right side related more to their real or basic self-image and attitude towards the world.
Your face’s right side often appears more pleasant, sensitive, vulnerable and/or open in expression. The left side is less expressive than the right and tends to reflect the hidden, severe, stern and/or depressed aspects you usually intend to keep private from the world -- and sometimes even from yourself.
The left side is more likely to register negative emotions, while the right side tends to reflect the more positive and optimistic, but not necessarily phony part of your personality.
“When I smile I must also show the grimace behind it.”
- Live Ullman, actress, author
Since the right side of the brain has more control over the left side of the body -- including the face -- then it stands to reason that the research on how the brain is organized, left and right, can give us insights into how we literally face the world and how we can better understand others. The left brain -- reflected more in the right side of the face -- relates to logic, pragmatic thinking, practicality and language.
The right part of the brain, in turn, relates more to intuition, imagination, and other more creative leanings.
The basic gut feelings, including your attitude towards yourself and your life emanate from your right brain. You express them more in the left side of your face.
We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are.
The more controlled or conscious responses -- the social mask you put on for the world -- may be processed more by the pragmatic left brain and appear more readily on the right side of the face.
Now you may be getting lost in “lefts” and “rights” of all this, but let’s continue with some experiments you can conduct to learn more about yourself and others for whom you have strong feelings (like or dislike) in your life.
How Do You See the World?
Ironically, the right brain is more actively involved in observing the world -- which it does predominantly through your left eye. And, when you face someone, your left eye is across from the other person’s right side. Therefore, you are more aware of their right side.
But you are thus most noticing the side of the other person’s face which is more connected with the left or “logical” and less revealing side. You miss facing the part of their face that is most likely to show underlying “true” feelings.
“Public / Private Face” Exercise
Here is a rather intimate exercise to do with someone -- and it doesn’t involve disrobing or even touching. Sit facing each other.
Now look at the left and the right sides of the other person’s face. Does the right side show a more open, less tense presence? Does the left look more reserved, serious?
The left side, that is their left side, is the more private face, remember, and the right side is their more public face. In fact, the left side is likely to show their more basic disposition. As you face each other, discuss your observations, one side at a time.
“The face is the most memorable part of the body and the eyes are the most memorable part of the face.”
- Werner Wolff, psychiatrist and hypnotist
“Driver’s License Photo Show” Exercise
Now try this experiment. Get out your driver’s license. Look at both sides of your face, covering one side at a time with a piece of paper. Look “inward” at yourself and see if you observe different aspects of yourself.
You may also want to look back at your family album and look at the progression of your face and your personality development overtime -- and that of others in your family. Look at the childhood albums of close friends and in-laws for other perspectives on them.
“Photo Finish” Exercise
To gain a still more revealing view of yourself, find two photographic negatives of “head and shoulders”, close-up pictures of yourself. If you don’t have any handy, ask someone to take two pictures of you; offer to do the same for them and compare notes on this exercise.
Cut both negatives of yourself vertically in half, down the center of your face. Flop over one side of each negative. Take a glossy-coated side and a dull-coated side of the left side of your face from the two negatives, and ask your camera shop to print it to create a “left-left” photo.
Take a glossy and a dull-sided half of your face and also get a “right-right” print made. Thus, instead of the normal right-left photo of your actual face, the joined half negatives become right-right and left-left faces.
You will then see exaggerated versions of both aspects of yourself -- and will probably be able to see each more clearly.
- Houdini, magician
We are all literally and unwittingly two-faced. To learn more about how you present yourself to the world, and your underlying, more “private” feelings, you just have to look yourself in the face. What to get out a mirror now, before you read further? Do you attract or alienate your insurance prospects and longtime staff?
You constantly present two aspects of yourself, on the two sides of your face. Recent research on the different functions of the left and right sides of the brain helps to explain why this is so. The two, vertical halves of the face are each affected by the nerves of the opposite side of the brain and show the world different parts of how you feel.
In fact, the two sides of your face, like the two sides of your body -- -the left and the right -- are usually asymmetrical and unequal in proportion. Look at yourself in the mirror -- full-face and full length -- to see the differences.
In short, your face is your shorthand to your body language.
Your expressions, in repose, are icons of your attitudes toward life.
The left side is your more “private” part of your personality and your right is the more “public” side of your face. The left often looks less happy than the right. Most subjects who have been analyzed projected their wish images upon their left side of their face and their right side related more to their real or basic self-image and attitude towards the world.
Your face’s right side often appears more pleasant, sensitive, vulnerable and/or open in expression. The left side is less expressive than the right and tends to reflect the hidden, severe, stern and/or depressed aspects you usually intend to keep private from the world -- and sometimes even from yourself.
The left side is more likely to register negative emotions, while the right side tends to reflect the more positive and optimistic, but not necessarily phony part of your personality.
“When I smile I must also show the grimace behind it.”
- Live Ullman, actress, author
Since the right side of the brain has more control over the left side of the body -- including the face -- then it stands to reason that the research on how the brain is organized, left and right, can give us insights into how we literally face the world and how we can better understand others. The left brain -- reflected more in the right side of the face -- relates to logic, pragmatic thinking, practicality and language.
The right part of the brain, in turn, relates more to intuition, imagination, and other more creative leanings.
The basic gut feelings, including your attitude towards yourself and your life emanate from your right brain. You express them more in the left side of your face.
We do not see things as they are; we see them as we are.
The more controlled or conscious responses -- the social mask you put on for the world -- may be processed more by the pragmatic left brain and appear more readily on the right side of the face.
Now you may be getting lost in “lefts” and “rights” of all this, but let’s continue with some experiments you can conduct to learn more about yourself and others for whom you have strong feelings (like or dislike) in your life.
How Do You See the World?
Ironically, the right brain is more actively involved in observing the world -- which it does predominantly through your left eye. And, when you face someone, your left eye is across from the other person’s right side. Therefore, you are more aware of their right side.
But you are thus most noticing the side of the other person’s face which is more connected with the left or “logical” and less revealing side. You miss facing the part of their face that is most likely to show underlying “true” feelings.
“Public / Private Face” Exercise
Here is a rather intimate exercise to do with someone -- and it doesn’t involve disrobing or even touching. Sit facing each other.
Now look at the left and the right sides of the other person’s face. Does the right side show a more open, less tense presence? Does the left look more reserved, serious?
The left side, that is their left side, is the more private face, remember, and the right side is their more public face. In fact, the left side is likely to show their more basic disposition. As you face each other, discuss your observations, one side at a time.
“The face is the most memorable part of the body and the eyes are the most memorable part of the face.”
- Werner Wolff, psychiatrist and hypnotist
“Driver’s License Photo Show” Exercise
Now try this experiment. Get out your driver’s license. Look at both sides of your face, covering one side at a time with a piece of paper. Look “inward” at yourself and see if you observe different aspects of yourself.
You may also want to look back at your family album and look at the progression of your face and your personality development overtime -- and that of others in your family. Look at the childhood albums of close friends and in-laws for other perspectives on them.
“Photo Finish” Exercise
To gain a still more revealing view of yourself, find two photographic negatives of “head and shoulders”, close-up pictures of yourself. If you don’t have any handy, ask someone to take two pictures of you; offer to do the same for them and compare notes on this exercise.
Cut both negatives of yourself vertically in half, down the center of your face. Flop over one side of each negative. Take a glossy-coated side and a dull-coated side of the left side of your face from the two negatives, and ask your camera shop to print it to create a “left-left” photo.
Take a glossy and a dull-sided half of your face and also get a “right-right” print made. Thus, instead of the normal right-left photo of your actual face, the joined half negatives become right-right and left-left faces.
You will then see exaggerated versions of both aspects of yourself -- and will probably be able to see each more clearly.
Keeping Cool While Under Fire
Imagine. The number one reason people get fired in the U.S. is anger, and
the number one problem people say they have at work is they do not feel
heard and respected.
How do we make people feel heard when they are difficult to be around -- and still stand up for ourselves? If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail.
Here are some more "tools" to add to your "toolbox" for the next time someone is upset and taking it out on you. None will work all the time, and some will work better for your personality style than others.
Here are some suggestions:
Lighten Up.
When others begin to act "hot," we instinctively tend to either
1. Escalate (become like them and get loud, more hostile, or other
mimicing reactions), or
2. Withdraw (poker face, quiet down).
Either approach gets us out of balance. Both are self-protective but
self-sabotaging reactions. They are akin to saying "I don't like your
behavior -- therefore I am going to give you more power." Instead, slow
everything down: your voice level and rate and the amount and frequency ofyour body motions.
Be aware that you are feeling a hot reaction to the other person. Instead
of dwelling on your growing feelings, move to a de-escalating action and
leave room for everyone, especially the person in the wrong, to save face
and self-correct.
Take the "Three A's" Approach:
* Acknowledge that you heard the person, with a pause (buys time for both to cool off), nod, or verbal acknowledgment that does not immediately take sides ("I understand you have a concern" rather than "You shouldn't have ... ." ) or involve blaming or "bad labeling" language ("Let's discuss what would work best for us both now" rather than "That was a dumb . . .) that pours hot coals on the heat of escalation and hardens the person into their position.
* Ask for more information so you both can cool off more and you can find
some common ground based on her or his underlying concerns or needs.
Try to
"warm up" to the part of the person you can respect -- focus on it mentally
and refer to it verbally: "You are so dedicated" or "knowledgeable" or
whatever their self-image is that leads them toward rationalizing their
behavior.
* Add your own. Say, perhaps, "May I tell you my perspective?" This sets
them up to give you permission to state your view.
Presume Innocence
Nobody wants to be told they are wrong. Whenever you have reason to believe someone is lying or not making sense, you will not build rapport by
pointing it out to them. Allow them to save face and keep asking questions
until you lose imagination or control. Say, for example, "How does that
relate to the . . ." (then state the apparently conflicting information).
You might find you were wrong, and thus you "save face." Or, by continued
nonthreatening questions, you can "softly corner" the other person into
self-correcting, which protects your future relationship.
Look to Their Positive Intent,
Especially When They Appear to Have None
Our instincts are to look for the ways we are right and others are . . .
less right. In arguing, as the momentum builds, we mentally focus on the
smart, thoughtful, and "right" things we are doing, while obsessing about
the dumb, thoughtless, and otherwise wrong things the other person is
doing. This tendency leads us to take a superior or righteous position, get
more rigid, and listen less as the argument continues.
Difficult as you might find it, try staying mindful of your worst side and
their best side as you find yourself falling into an escalating argument.
You will probably be more generous and patient with them, and increase the chances that they will see areas where you might be right after all.
Dump Their Stuff Back in Their Lap
If someone is verbally dumping on you, do not interrupt, counter, or
counterattack in midstream, or you will only prolong and intensify their
comments. When they have finished, ask "Is there anything else you want to add?" Then say, "What would make this situation better?" or "How can we improve this situation in a way you believe we can both accept?"
Ask them to propose a solution to the issue they have raised. If they
continue to complain or attack, acknowledge you heard them each time and, like a broken record, repeat yourself in increasingly brief language
variations: "What will make it better?"
Do not attempt to solve problems others raise, even if they ask for advice
-- they might make you wrong. People will spend more time proving their way works best than using a method suggested by someone else, even someone we love or like. It's only human.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
5 Tips for Reaching Better Agreements More Easily
in Everyday Life
1. If you embarrass someone while trying to reach an agreement, you might never have their full attention again.
2. Even and especially when you have the upper hand, do not make a victim of the underdog.
3. Offering something free and valued up-front, unasked, often implants the desire to reciprocate, even beyond the value of the offer.
4. Problems seldom exist at the level at which they are discussed. Until
you get some notion of the underlying conflict, you will not be able to
find a solution.
5. If you want more from another person, wait to ask for it after they have
invested more time, energy, money, reputation, or other resource.
See more ideas at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/
http://sayitbetter.typepad.com/say_it_better
the number one problem people say they have at work is they do not feel
heard and respected.
How do we make people feel heard when they are difficult to be around -- and still stand up for ourselves? If the only tool you have is a hammer, you treat everything like a nail.
Here are some more "tools" to add to your "toolbox" for the next time someone is upset and taking it out on you. None will work all the time, and some will work better for your personality style than others.
Here are some suggestions:
Lighten Up.
When others begin to act "hot," we instinctively tend to either
1. Escalate (become like them and get loud, more hostile, or other
mimicing reactions), or
2. Withdraw (poker face, quiet down).
Either approach gets us out of balance. Both are self-protective but
self-sabotaging reactions. They are akin to saying "I don't like your
behavior -- therefore I am going to give you more power." Instead, slow
everything down: your voice level and rate and the amount and frequency ofyour body motions.
Be aware that you are feeling a hot reaction to the other person. Instead
of dwelling on your growing feelings, move to a de-escalating action and
leave room for everyone, especially the person in the wrong, to save face
and self-correct.
Take the "Three A's" Approach:
* Acknowledge that you heard the person, with a pause (buys time for both to cool off), nod, or verbal acknowledgment that does not immediately take sides ("I understand you have a concern" rather than "You shouldn't have ... ." ) or involve blaming or "bad labeling" language ("Let's discuss what would work best for us both now" rather than "That was a dumb . . .) that pours hot coals on the heat of escalation and hardens the person into their position.
* Ask for more information so you both can cool off more and you can find
some common ground based on her or his underlying concerns or needs.
Try to
"warm up" to the part of the person you can respect -- focus on it mentally
and refer to it verbally: "You are so dedicated" or "knowledgeable" or
whatever their self-image is that leads them toward rationalizing their
behavior.
* Add your own. Say, perhaps, "May I tell you my perspective?" This sets
them up to give you permission to state your view.
Presume Innocence
Nobody wants to be told they are wrong. Whenever you have reason to believe someone is lying or not making sense, you will not build rapport by
pointing it out to them. Allow them to save face and keep asking questions
until you lose imagination or control. Say, for example, "How does that
relate to the . . ." (then state the apparently conflicting information).
You might find you were wrong, and thus you "save face." Or, by continued
nonthreatening questions, you can "softly corner" the other person into
self-correcting, which protects your future relationship.
Look to Their Positive Intent,
Especially When They Appear to Have None
Our instincts are to look for the ways we are right and others are . . .
less right. In arguing, as the momentum builds, we mentally focus on the
smart, thoughtful, and "right" things we are doing, while obsessing about
the dumb, thoughtless, and otherwise wrong things the other person is
doing. This tendency leads us to take a superior or righteous position, get
more rigid, and listen less as the argument continues.
Difficult as you might find it, try staying mindful of your worst side and
their best side as you find yourself falling into an escalating argument.
You will probably be more generous and patient with them, and increase the chances that they will see areas where you might be right after all.
Dump Their Stuff Back in Their Lap
If someone is verbally dumping on you, do not interrupt, counter, or
counterattack in midstream, or you will only prolong and intensify their
comments. When they have finished, ask "Is there anything else you want to add?" Then say, "What would make this situation better?" or "How can we improve this situation in a way you believe we can both accept?"
Ask them to propose a solution to the issue they have raised. If they
continue to complain or attack, acknowledge you heard them each time and, like a broken record, repeat yourself in increasingly brief language
variations: "What will make it better?"
Do not attempt to solve problems others raise, even if they ask for advice
-- they might make you wrong. People will spend more time proving their way works best than using a method suggested by someone else, even someone we love or like. It's only human.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
5 Tips for Reaching Better Agreements More Easily
in Everyday Life
1. If you embarrass someone while trying to reach an agreement, you might never have their full attention again.
2. Even and especially when you have the upper hand, do not make a victim of the underdog.
3. Offering something free and valued up-front, unasked, often implants the desire to reciprocate, even beyond the value of the offer.
4. Problems seldom exist at the level at which they are discussed. Until
you get some notion of the underlying conflict, you will not be able to
find a solution.
5. If you want more from another person, wait to ask for it after they have
invested more time, energy, money, reputation, or other resource.
See more ideas at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/
http://sayitbetter.typepad.com/say_it_better
Kindness as Innoculation Can Open Opportunities as Well as Hearts
"Write injuries in sand, kindnesses in marble."
~ French proverb
Whatever we praise, we can cause to flourish. We can choose, moment by moment, where to put our attention, emotion, and intention. It is all energy. Look to someone’s positive intent, especially when it appears she may have none.
"The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines," wrote Charles Kuralt in On the Road with Charles Kuralt.
"Keep what is worth keeping. And with the breath of kindness blow the rest away," wrote English novelist, Dinah Mulock Craik. Here's to making more opportunities to play, laugh, celebrate, and "say it better" in cultivating kindness as life's genuine "keeper."
Life contains few absolutes, and one of those few is that kindness usually cultivates connection, something we yearn for in a time-pressed, ear-to-the- cell-phone, relationship-diminished culture. After all, the heart can be our strongest muscle if we exercise it regularly. Yet being kind is not a guarantee of safety from hurt — nothing offers that failsafe comfort.
"Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships," wrote Barbara Grizzuti Harrison in an article for McCall's magazine way back in 1975.
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares," wrote Henri Nouwen in Out of Solitude.
Years ago from my college classmate, Alasi Perdanan, I heard a Persian proverb, "With a sweet tongue of kindness, you can drag an elephant by a hair."
"Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate," wrote Albert Schweitzer. "He who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love," wrote the Greek religious leader, Saint Basil.
Kindness is often unspoken. "An eye can threaten like a loaded and leveled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. At another time, Emerson wrote, "You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late."
"You may be sorry that you spoke, sorry you stayed or went, sorry you won or lost, sorry so much was spent. But as you go through life, you'll find -- you're never sorry you were kind," said Herbert Prochnow.
"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom," wrote Theodore Isaac Rubin in "One to One."
"Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness and small obligations win and preserve the heart” said English chemist Humphrey Davy.
"We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop that makes it run over. So in a series of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over," once wrote the Scottish lawyer and biographer, James Boswell.
"We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck . . . But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness," wrote columnist Ellen Goodman.
From an artist's perspective, ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov once said, "The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure."
~ French proverb
Whatever we praise, we can cause to flourish. We can choose, moment by moment, where to put our attention, emotion, and intention. It is all energy. Look to someone’s positive intent, especially when it appears she may have none.
"The everyday kindness of the back roads more than makes up for the acts of greed in the headlines," wrote Charles Kuralt in On the Road with Charles Kuralt.
"Keep what is worth keeping. And with the breath of kindness blow the rest away," wrote English novelist, Dinah Mulock Craik. Here's to making more opportunities to play, laugh, celebrate, and "say it better" in cultivating kindness as life's genuine "keeper."
Life contains few absolutes, and one of those few is that kindness usually cultivates connection, something we yearn for in a time-pressed, ear-to-the- cell-phone, relationship-diminished culture. After all, the heart can be our strongest muscle if we exercise it regularly. Yet being kind is not a guarantee of safety from hurt — nothing offers that failsafe comfort.
"Kindness and intelligence don't always deliver us from the pitfalls and traps: there are always failures of love, of will, of imagination. There is no way to take the danger out of human relationships," wrote Barbara Grizzuti Harrison in an article for McCall's magazine way back in 1975.
"When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares," wrote Henri Nouwen in Out of Solitude.
Years ago from my college classmate, Alasi Perdanan, I heard a Persian proverb, "With a sweet tongue of kindness, you can drag an elephant by a hair."
"Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate," wrote Albert Schweitzer. "He who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love," wrote the Greek religious leader, Saint Basil.
Kindness is often unspoken. "An eye can threaten like a loaded and leveled gun, or it can insult like hissing or kicking; or, in its altered mood, by beams of kindness, it can make the heart dance for joy," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. At another time, Emerson wrote, "You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late."
"You may be sorry that you spoke, sorry you stayed or went, sorry you won or lost, sorry so much was spent. But as you go through life, you'll find -- you're never sorry you were kind," said Herbert Prochnow.
"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom," wrote Theodore Isaac Rubin in "One to One."
"Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness and small obligations win and preserve the heart” said English chemist Humphrey Davy.
"We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop that makes it run over. So in a series of kindness there is, at last, one which makes the heart run over," once wrote the Scottish lawyer and biographer, James Boswell.
"We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck . . . But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness," wrote columnist Ellen Goodman.
From an artist's perspective, ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov once said, "The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure."
Motivating Yourself to Move Past Procrastination to Savor Your Just Rewards
Remember the agitated, bleary late-night looks on your friends' faces in college as they attempted to cram a semester of learning into the night before a final? Perhaps you were one of those crammers.
Then you probably resented righteous-looking people like me who appeared to spend a pleasant bit of time each day on reading and class note taking before sailing through tests.
You'll be happy to know that people like me all get our comeuppance in other situations. How? Because everybody gets mind blocks to doing some kinds of tasks.
Mind blocks have nothing to do with mental acuity. They're very much a part of the human experience, albeit an irritating part for which most of us emotionally flagellate ourselves about, as we continue to avoid the task, thus incurring double damage. We all have them.
We just have different kinds of places we get stuck on different kinds of tasks. My blocks, for example, are with big or boring talks. I can easily slide into writing a brief article or going on a half hour morning run along the hills above my seaside village of Sausalito.
Give me a larger task, however, such as writing a book or going into the gym for an hour (minimum needed) work-out or a boring "time-waste" task like getting to the dry cleaners or gas station and I can become diabolically clever at deceiving myself into all the reasons why I can't start, right now anyway, but will sometime soon. Sound familiar?
Here's some tricks to getting yourself into a kind of task you often find yourself avoiding and even finding ways to feel righteous as you savor completion.
Vividly Specific Contrasting Scenarios
Picture the worst and best case situations -- in all their emotional details -- for not starting an important task now.
How bad could the consequences be if you don't get it done or done right?
How exciting could it be if you did it on time and superbly?
What if you intend to start it later today?
How many things "beyond your control" can prevent you from getting started? If you did, in fact, start it right now, when is the soonest you might be done if you get clear and focused, and allow no other interruptions until you get to a crucial state of completion or actually finish it?
What small indulgence could you give yourself when you're done? Take a break to savor time with a colleague who makes you laugh? Get a surprise gift for a friend who's been especially thoughtful recently? Dive into another, slightly less pressing task and actually get ahead of the curve for once?
See Your Success Again and Again
Since most of us have time-pressed lives, allowing yourself to savor each success is akin to imprinting on your psyche the experience of satisfaction with a task completed.
Just as athletes learn new habits to improve performance by watching videos of master athletes, then store up memories of those images of successful work-outs for their constant internal play-back, your stored-up memories of ease in task completion can motivate you to have those satisfying experiences more often.
You are literally seeing yourself repeat your performance. That's new habit-forming. You will become more naturally inclined to dive in early and get more tasks completed in a state of inward and outward grace.
Take on a Big Task, a Bite at a Time
Large or unfamiliar tasks where you don't feel especially confident about your future performance are the ones you're most likely to avoid. Write down the steps to completion.
Call this approach "going slow to go faster later."
Writing will make the steps more real and doable to you and your commitment to the timetables you attach to each task become more vital. They are right in front of you. Post your " tasks and timetable" where you can't avoid seeing it. Tell others of your commitment to that sheet. These actions will place the task higher in your consciousness.
Reward Yourself and Savor Your Rewards
Plan your rewards ahead of time. Diligent nurse that you are, don't deny yourself the reward when you are done by rushing onto the next task. Life goes by too fast anyway. For example, when I complete boring tasks -- and not before -- I allow myself time to do something that gives me pleasure, such as a stop at a bookstore or time with a friend. When I finish a big important task I give myself a bigger reward such as a trip or new outfit.
Sidelong Glancing at It
Sometimes facing a task straight on just makes you freeze. Try to picture how to do it by "sidelong glancing", that is getting small glimpses out of the corner of your mental eye about how you can most easily do the task.
One of the best ways is to literally get moving and looking around. In times of mind-blocks, anger or tension, men tend to act out more while women tend to shut down, moving less. You will be more aware of your emotions and motivations when you get into motion. Consider walking, showering, eating or otherwise being "on your way" to doing the task. You will let your mind go naturally free.
When you are in motion and not focusing directly on what you have to do, especially if you can get outside into the fresh air and sunlight, you can literally see farther, gain a larger perspective and see how the parts of the task can fit together.
You will pull up ideas from lower in your consciousness, think of apparently unrelated ideas that do, in fact, have a bearing on ways to get the task done. Your unconscious mind becomes your friend in helping you recognize your best path to accomplishing the task. And the task will seem less onerous because you lift your mood when you put yourself in motion.
Then you probably resented righteous-looking people like me who appeared to spend a pleasant bit of time each day on reading and class note taking before sailing through tests.
You'll be happy to know that people like me all get our comeuppance in other situations. How? Because everybody gets mind blocks to doing some kinds of tasks.
Mind blocks have nothing to do with mental acuity. They're very much a part of the human experience, albeit an irritating part for which most of us emotionally flagellate ourselves about, as we continue to avoid the task, thus incurring double damage. We all have them.
We just have different kinds of places we get stuck on different kinds of tasks. My blocks, for example, are with big or boring talks. I can easily slide into writing a brief article or going on a half hour morning run along the hills above my seaside village of Sausalito.
Give me a larger task, however, such as writing a book or going into the gym for an hour (minimum needed) work-out or a boring "time-waste" task like getting to the dry cleaners or gas station and I can become diabolically clever at deceiving myself into all the reasons why I can't start, right now anyway, but will sometime soon. Sound familiar?
Here's some tricks to getting yourself into a kind of task you often find yourself avoiding and even finding ways to feel righteous as you savor completion.
Vividly Specific Contrasting Scenarios
Picture the worst and best case situations -- in all their emotional details -- for not starting an important task now.
How bad could the consequences be if you don't get it done or done right?
How exciting could it be if you did it on time and superbly?
What if you intend to start it later today?
How many things "beyond your control" can prevent you from getting started? If you did, in fact, start it right now, when is the soonest you might be done if you get clear and focused, and allow no other interruptions until you get to a crucial state of completion or actually finish it?
What small indulgence could you give yourself when you're done? Take a break to savor time with a colleague who makes you laugh? Get a surprise gift for a friend who's been especially thoughtful recently? Dive into another, slightly less pressing task and actually get ahead of the curve for once?
See Your Success Again and Again
Since most of us have time-pressed lives, allowing yourself to savor each success is akin to imprinting on your psyche the experience of satisfaction with a task completed.
Just as athletes learn new habits to improve performance by watching videos of master athletes, then store up memories of those images of successful work-outs for their constant internal play-back, your stored-up memories of ease in task completion can motivate you to have those satisfying experiences more often.
You are literally seeing yourself repeat your performance. That's new habit-forming. You will become more naturally inclined to dive in early and get more tasks completed in a state of inward and outward grace.
Take on a Big Task, a Bite at a Time
Large or unfamiliar tasks where you don't feel especially confident about your future performance are the ones you're most likely to avoid. Write down the steps to completion.
Call this approach "going slow to go faster later."
Writing will make the steps more real and doable to you and your commitment to the timetables you attach to each task become more vital. They are right in front of you. Post your " tasks and timetable" where you can't avoid seeing it. Tell others of your commitment to that sheet. These actions will place the task higher in your consciousness.
Reward Yourself and Savor Your Rewards
Plan your rewards ahead of time. Diligent nurse that you are, don't deny yourself the reward when you are done by rushing onto the next task. Life goes by too fast anyway. For example, when I complete boring tasks -- and not before -- I allow myself time to do something that gives me pleasure, such as a stop at a bookstore or time with a friend. When I finish a big important task I give myself a bigger reward such as a trip or new outfit.
Sidelong Glancing at It
Sometimes facing a task straight on just makes you freeze. Try to picture how to do it by "sidelong glancing", that is getting small glimpses out of the corner of your mental eye about how you can most easily do the task.
One of the best ways is to literally get moving and looking around. In times of mind-blocks, anger or tension, men tend to act out more while women tend to shut down, moving less. You will be more aware of your emotions and motivations when you get into motion. Consider walking, showering, eating or otherwise being "on your way" to doing the task. You will let your mind go naturally free.
When you are in motion and not focusing directly on what you have to do, especially if you can get outside into the fresh air and sunlight, you can literally see farther, gain a larger perspective and see how the parts of the task can fit together.
You will pull up ideas from lower in your consciousness, think of apparently unrelated ideas that do, in fact, have a bearing on ways to get the task done. Your unconscious mind becomes your friend in helping you recognize your best path to accomplishing the task. And the task will seem less onerous because you lift your mood when you put yourself in motion.
Listen to Lead
“Our attitude is the crayon that colors our world.”—Allen Klein, cancer doctor.
In a time-pressed, relationship-diminished world, you are able to demonstrate a caring attitude most quickly through compassionate, complete listening. Yet we are so rushed, slowing down to listen, without interruption is an increasingly rare happening—so of course you’ll really stand out when you do.
Seeing the rewards for listening may help you become motivated to practice. Upfront, I admit that what I’m prosing here has often been hard for me to practice myself.
Learning to listen is more difficult than learning to ask good questions but there are rich and immediate rewards from being an obviously thoughtful listener. With less stress and energy on your part, you naturally bring others closer sooner, when you listen without interruption, rather than asking questions.
You can confirm by listening what you have most in common with that person, in that moment, so you can see where to build bridges to deepen the relationship. The deeper the relationship the stronger the roots of connection for the inevitable miscommunication or disagreement.
Further, you’ll know what part of your needs or request to bring up first to attract their support, because you have observed their hot button interests and dislikes. You can approach a topic by suggesting your idea in a way that serves the interests the speaker has already mentioned in the conversation.
In a crowd of active speakers, you may feel left out or shunted aside when you speak less, but if you wait until others have spoken first, you can propose your suggestions or idea as specific extensions or examples of what others have already said is important to them.
Quieting the chattering mind promotes directed action.
Listening may seem like a passive task, but, in fact, it requires more mental and emotional energy to do right than even speaking compellingly. Why? Because our gut instinctual reaction is to perceive that other people mean the same thing that we would mean if they say or act a certain way.
For example, a man who once worked for me when I headed a high tech division of a company was often treated as if he was thick-headed or even a withholder because he took longer to respond to others’ questions, spoke much more slowly and haltingly than most everyone else in this fast-paced company and seldom looked people in the eye when he spoke to them.
“There is much to be said for not saying much.”—Frank Tyger
As well, he seldom answered a question directly but often gave lengthy preambles and apparently tangential facts before he main his main point.
He was, however the most brilliant, big picture and inventive of the people I met in the company. He was also extremely shy, easily overwhelmed by fast movements, loud and rapid speaking and rambunctious, interruptive discussions—the hallmarks of many of the meetings in this company.
His core work group, after considerable frictions and dissention, miraculously agreed on some specific rules to see if it would help them get along better. This happened only after he wrote a memo that elegantly and articulately outlined a solution to the main problem on the project in which they were working.
The rest of the group then realized that their success depended on making him feel comfortable in exchanging ideas with them. They agreed that they would not interrupt him when he was speaking, at least for four minutes, a more reasonable goal, they thought, that attempting to say they would never interrupt him. He, in turn, agreed to propose his main idea upfront, and then elaborate, and to also respond directly to questions, then expand upon his answer.
The unexpected side benefit is that, over time, he became much more comfortable with speaking up sooner and looking at others more as he spoke. The rest of the group, in turn, started noticing that they were seeing other sides of each other as their meetings had slow as well as fast-paced parts to them.
The kind of person who now gets more done through others. Research shows that Americans are more likely to trust and support a new kind of leader who exhibits strong listening and action skills. Unlike the John F. Kennedy—model of “Charismatic Leader” that worked in the past, they find other kinds of behavior and group interaction more satisfying and inspiring.
While many experts on leadership such as Warren Bennis and Steve Covey offer valuable ideas on what leadership should look like, two research studies, one by the U.S. Air Force and the other by M.I.T, show that people are more likely to listen to and take action in support of certain people who exhibited at least three of seven behavioral traits, regardless of the “Synthesizer-Style” leaders’ age, sex, ethnicity, education or even physical size.
“Synthesizer Leaders” bring out the most productive, high performance side of their colleagues.
This new style of “Most Valuable Player” does make their presence felt in their organization and they are much less likely than past leaders to take center stage in all situations and voice an opinion early or take charge of projects. They do not need TQM programs because they set clear, specific rules and rewards up front which they don’t change mid stream.
In a time-pressed, relationship-diminished world, you are able to demonstrate a caring attitude most quickly through compassionate, complete listening. Yet we are so rushed, slowing down to listen, without interruption is an increasingly rare happening—so of course you’ll really stand out when you do.
Seeing the rewards for listening may help you become motivated to practice. Upfront, I admit that what I’m prosing here has often been hard for me to practice myself.
Learning to listen is more difficult than learning to ask good questions but there are rich and immediate rewards from being an obviously thoughtful listener. With less stress and energy on your part, you naturally bring others closer sooner, when you listen without interruption, rather than asking questions.
You can confirm by listening what you have most in common with that person, in that moment, so you can see where to build bridges to deepen the relationship. The deeper the relationship the stronger the roots of connection for the inevitable miscommunication or disagreement.
Further, you’ll know what part of your needs or request to bring up first to attract their support, because you have observed their hot button interests and dislikes. You can approach a topic by suggesting your idea in a way that serves the interests the speaker has already mentioned in the conversation.
In a crowd of active speakers, you may feel left out or shunted aside when you speak less, but if you wait until others have spoken first, you can propose your suggestions or idea as specific extensions or examples of what others have already said is important to them.
Quieting the chattering mind promotes directed action.
Listening may seem like a passive task, but, in fact, it requires more mental and emotional energy to do right than even speaking compellingly. Why? Because our gut instinctual reaction is to perceive that other people mean the same thing that we would mean if they say or act a certain way.
For example, a man who once worked for me when I headed a high tech division of a company was often treated as if he was thick-headed or even a withholder because he took longer to respond to others’ questions, spoke much more slowly and haltingly than most everyone else in this fast-paced company and seldom looked people in the eye when he spoke to them.
“There is much to be said for not saying much.”—Frank Tyger
As well, he seldom answered a question directly but often gave lengthy preambles and apparently tangential facts before he main his main point.
He was, however the most brilliant, big picture and inventive of the people I met in the company. He was also extremely shy, easily overwhelmed by fast movements, loud and rapid speaking and rambunctious, interruptive discussions—the hallmarks of many of the meetings in this company.
His core work group, after considerable frictions and dissention, miraculously agreed on some specific rules to see if it would help them get along better. This happened only after he wrote a memo that elegantly and articulately outlined a solution to the main problem on the project in which they were working.
The rest of the group then realized that their success depended on making him feel comfortable in exchanging ideas with them. They agreed that they would not interrupt him when he was speaking, at least for four minutes, a more reasonable goal, they thought, that attempting to say they would never interrupt him. He, in turn, agreed to propose his main idea upfront, and then elaborate, and to also respond directly to questions, then expand upon his answer.
The unexpected side benefit is that, over time, he became much more comfortable with speaking up sooner and looking at others more as he spoke. The rest of the group, in turn, started noticing that they were seeing other sides of each other as their meetings had slow as well as fast-paced parts to them.
The kind of person who now gets more done through others. Research shows that Americans are more likely to trust and support a new kind of leader who exhibits strong listening and action skills. Unlike the John F. Kennedy—model of “Charismatic Leader” that worked in the past, they find other kinds of behavior and group interaction more satisfying and inspiring.
While many experts on leadership such as Warren Bennis and Steve Covey offer valuable ideas on what leadership should look like, two research studies, one by the U.S. Air Force and the other by M.I.T, show that people are more likely to listen to and take action in support of certain people who exhibited at least three of seven behavioral traits, regardless of the “Synthesizer-Style” leaders’ age, sex, ethnicity, education or even physical size.
“Synthesizer Leaders” bring out the most productive, high performance side of their colleagues.
This new style of “Most Valuable Player” does make their presence felt in their organization and they are much less likely than past leaders to take center stage in all situations and voice an opinion early or take charge of projects. They do not need TQM programs because they set clear, specific rules and rewards up front which they don’t change mid stream.
The Personal Cost of Shyness
Has someone nearby been sending you emails rather than calling or meeting you face-to-face? When you do get together, does she or he stand back, avoid holding eye contact, or speaking up?
While there are many possible reasons for their behavior, that person may, in fact, be a victim of what has become “the third most prevalent psychiatric disorder” according to Dr. Lynne Henderson, a director of The Shyness Clinic. Yes, shyness. Along with Dr. Phil Zimbardo, recently retired from of Stanford University, Henderson has been studying what they believe is a growing social epidemic.
In their research, nearly half of Americans describe themselves as chronically shy. Another 40% considered themselves as previously shy and only about 5% believed they were never shy. Dr. Zimbardo intends to draw more public attention to this disorder in his role as the new president of the American Psychological Assocation.
Shy people tend to smile, touch and speak less. In social situations they experience symptoms such as rapid heartbeat, perspiration, and butterflies in the stomach . . . often. Henderson and Zimbardo say that shyness is a form of excessive self- preoccupation.
Shy people think more negative thoughts about themselves, are more likely to expect to be rejected and perceive others as less approachable than less shy people. They are even more likely to forget information presented to them when they believe that they are being evaluated.
In short, the world looks like a scary, unfriendly place, so, ironically, they prove themselves right and often look unapproachable.
At what cost? Shy people obviously have more trouble meeting people, conversing, forming relationships -- participating in life. Professor emeritus Thomas Harrell of Stanford University examined Stanford M.B.A.'s over a 20 year period to elicit their "success" factor and found that, “The number one factor linked with success was social extroversion, the ability to speak up, something that shy people are least apt to do.
The bad news continues. In addition to the pervasive loneliness which shyness engenders, two potent, negative consequences of shyness are:
1) Greater health problems because shy people tend to have a weak network of friends and are thus less resilient to illness and less likely to even tell give doctors sufficient information to be treated, and
2. Likely to make less money, live up to their potential at work or feel appreciated for their contributions.
Metaphorically, shyness is a shrinking back from life that weakens the bonds of human connection. In her book, “That’s Not What I Meant”, Dr. Deborah Tannen wrote that, “Little of what we say is really important, relative to the words that are used, but it is the conversation itself that shows involvement.”
Why are more American describing themselves as shy?
Is it our growing social isolation? Machines are replacing humans in many of our everyday interactions, from bank ATMs to gas stations to Email. Dr. Henderson believes that, “The growing context of indifference to others means a lowered priority is being given to being social.” With less time spent in face-to-face interaction people are feeliing less comfortable with their ability to connect when they do want that closeness, turning modern-day shy.
Shyness expert, Jonathan Berent, offers four pieces of advice which I have paraphrased:
1. When you feel safe you do not feel shy.
Seek out and create safe environments to experience the non-shy parts of yourself, where you can be completely yourself without fear of judgment or negative consequences.
2. You are responsible for your actions, not your feelings.
A natural instinct is to be driven to get rid of uncomfortable feelings. But you can remove feelings or control them. You can only feel them and then move onto what you want to feel or do next.
3. Your feelings are not within your control, but your follow-up thoughts and actions are. Trying not to feel shy leads you to trying not to feel at all. Try stuffing your feelings and you may turn compulsive, obsessive, addicted to something or someone and/or withdraw.
If you try to stay with your feeling of shyness and see the worst that you can feel, then, over time, you know that you can survive, and even thrive in situation that had seemed scary.
4. Shy people are often attracted to those who do not return the affection which is a very painful way of creating safety. Knowing this, you can become more aware of people who are comfortable enough to reciprocate your reaching out.
One final personal note. Most of my childhood I was quiet and kept to myself, mostly because I enjoyed daydreaming and reading. But most people thought that I was shy. In fact a school therapist diagnosed me as “phobically shy.” I saw how isolating their view of me could make my life if I did not learn to reach out more so that people would be comfortable with me when I did want to connect.
We all know from harsh experience that, while everyone yearns to be known and cared for, not everyone knows how to show appreciation in the face of caring. You “say it better” to connect and care, not because those gestures will always be acknowledged, but because, it is your brave and warm expression of how you want to live your life. Yes?
While there are many possible reasons for their behavior, that person may, in fact, be a victim of what has become “the third most prevalent psychiatric disorder” according to Dr. Lynne Henderson, a director of The Shyness Clinic. Yes, shyness. Along with Dr. Phil Zimbardo, recently retired from of Stanford University, Henderson has been studying what they believe is a growing social epidemic.
In their research, nearly half of Americans describe themselves as chronically shy. Another 40% considered themselves as previously shy and only about 5% believed they were never shy. Dr. Zimbardo intends to draw more public attention to this disorder in his role as the new president of the American Psychological Assocation.
Shy people tend to smile, touch and speak less. In social situations they experience symptoms such as rapid heartbeat, perspiration, and butterflies in the stomach . . . often. Henderson and Zimbardo say that shyness is a form of excessive self- preoccupation.
Shy people think more negative thoughts about themselves, are more likely to expect to be rejected and perceive others as less approachable than less shy people. They are even more likely to forget information presented to them when they believe that they are being evaluated.
In short, the world looks like a scary, unfriendly place, so, ironically, they prove themselves right and often look unapproachable.
At what cost? Shy people obviously have more trouble meeting people, conversing, forming relationships -- participating in life. Professor emeritus Thomas Harrell of Stanford University examined Stanford M.B.A.'s over a 20 year period to elicit their "success" factor and found that, “The number one factor linked with success was social extroversion, the ability to speak up, something that shy people are least apt to do.
The bad news continues. In addition to the pervasive loneliness which shyness engenders, two potent, negative consequences of shyness are:
1) Greater health problems because shy people tend to have a weak network of friends and are thus less resilient to illness and less likely to even tell give doctors sufficient information to be treated, and
2. Likely to make less money, live up to their potential at work or feel appreciated for their contributions.
Metaphorically, shyness is a shrinking back from life that weakens the bonds of human connection. In her book, “That’s Not What I Meant”, Dr. Deborah Tannen wrote that, “Little of what we say is really important, relative to the words that are used, but it is the conversation itself that shows involvement.”
Why are more American describing themselves as shy?
Is it our growing social isolation? Machines are replacing humans in many of our everyday interactions, from bank ATMs to gas stations to Email. Dr. Henderson believes that, “The growing context of indifference to others means a lowered priority is being given to being social.” With less time spent in face-to-face interaction people are feeliing less comfortable with their ability to connect when they do want that closeness, turning modern-day shy.
Shyness expert, Jonathan Berent, offers four pieces of advice which I have paraphrased:
1. When you feel safe you do not feel shy.
Seek out and create safe environments to experience the non-shy parts of yourself, where you can be completely yourself without fear of judgment or negative consequences.
2. You are responsible for your actions, not your feelings.
A natural instinct is to be driven to get rid of uncomfortable feelings. But you can remove feelings or control them. You can only feel them and then move onto what you want to feel or do next.
3. Your feelings are not within your control, but your follow-up thoughts and actions are. Trying not to feel shy leads you to trying not to feel at all. Try stuffing your feelings and you may turn compulsive, obsessive, addicted to something or someone and/or withdraw.
If you try to stay with your feeling of shyness and see the worst that you can feel, then, over time, you know that you can survive, and even thrive in situation that had seemed scary.
4. Shy people are often attracted to those who do not return the affection which is a very painful way of creating safety. Knowing this, you can become more aware of people who are comfortable enough to reciprocate your reaching out.
One final personal note. Most of my childhood I was quiet and kept to myself, mostly because I enjoyed daydreaming and reading. But most people thought that I was shy. In fact a school therapist diagnosed me as “phobically shy.” I saw how isolating their view of me could make my life if I did not learn to reach out more so that people would be comfortable with me when I did want to connect.
We all know from harsh experience that, while everyone yearns to be known and cared for, not everyone knows how to show appreciation in the face of caring. You “say it better” to connect and care, not because those gestures will always be acknowledged, but because, it is your brave and warm expression of how you want to live your life. Yes?
Ways to Sidelong Glance Back at Your Own Way of Deciding
• Do the mundane to experience the profound.
• Go slow to go fast.
• Step back from your hot subject to walk close to it.
• Do something real to see something intangible.
• Move your hands and body to move your mind and imagination.
• Look sideways to see directly.
• Look wide to see narrowly.
• Look at what you hate to recognize what you fear and don’t like in yourself.
• Hear your criticisms to discover your sense of your own inadequacies.
• Notice what you avoid to recognize what you most need to learn next.
• Notice when and where you dabble, doodle and dawdle to see your dreams for living the kind of adventure life story you really want.
• Go slow to go fast.
• Step back from your hot subject to walk close to it.
• Do something real to see something intangible.
• Move your hands and body to move your mind and imagination.
• Look sideways to see directly.
• Look wide to see narrowly.
• Look at what you hate to recognize what you fear and don’t like in yourself.
• Hear your criticisms to discover your sense of your own inadequacies.
• Notice what you avoid to recognize what you most need to learn next.
• Notice when and where you dabble, doodle and dawdle to see your dreams for living the kind of adventure life story you really want.
What’s Not Revealed is Often Most Revealing
Like many photographers before him, Richard Zaltman was visiting
remote areas of the world to capture images of people living
lives far removed from those in the United States.
Here’s what made his experience different.
One morning, while walking through an isolated village in Bhutan, he suddenly got the idea of turning his camera over to the locals to see what they would consider significant enough to show others about themselves.
Later, when he looked at all their pictures, he noticed that most of the photos cut off people’s feet. “At first, I thought the villagers had just aimed wrong,” Zaltman says. “But it turns out that being barefoot is a sign of poverty. Even though everyone was barefoot, people wanted to hide that - -which is an important message to see.”
You never really know someone until you see the choices she makes.
We instinctively put people into categories to make the world more understandable and then get surprised by a co-worker’s sudden vehemence about a new subject. That’s the mystery of life. You can have fewer surprises, however, when you seek to understand others’ less visible, underlying motives.
What others don’t reveal is often most revealing.
What one doesn’t say often says it all.
As surrealist painter, Rene Magrite wrote, “Everything we see hides something else we want to see.” Surrealists in art and literature in the 1920s and 1930s sought to understand and portray others’ subconscious perceptions of the physical world.
Remember that movie, many years ago, in which Mary Tyler Moore plays the grieving mother of her favorite son who died, choosing to avoid her surviving son? In fact leaning away from the son and her husband (played bo Donald Sutherland) in the family photo? Ah senior moment, I can’t recall the name of this engrossing movie – can you?
That’s why it may be interesting to look back through family and friends’ photo albums – and your photo albums. See how people positioned themselves in group photos – and how they positioned photos in their photo album.
You may be more aware of your choices as you ask your family or circle of friends to join you in creating a celebratory group photo album online (wherever you are in the world), as you now can through SnapJot.
Now, if you’d like to glean some insights into why people do what they do -- so you can find the common ground upon which to work or play together - discover their unstated or even unconscious motivations for protection or pleasure
Uncover what they feel but are not saying. Here are four ways to learn more about underlying feelings -- yours and others -- so you can be more thoughtful, clear and genuine in your choices and your communication.
1. Look for the “Bare Feet” That Aren’t in the Picture
To better understand someone and how to inspire that person to take positive action, learn to recognize his unstated “hot buttons of high emotion”, positive or negative. These are the major rules to his “operating manual” -- what makes him run smoothly, bump into obstacles or simply get stuck.
People act most quickly and intensely to avoid what they fear, even if their worst fear has a much lower probability of occurring than the possibility of their dream scenario. That’s because our deepest, most innate and primeval gut instinct is to survive. We reflexively react to any appearance of danger from the most primitive, triune part of the brain, which was developed way back when “fight or flight” seemed the only options for any situation.
2. See Them in Motion to See Their Emotions
Seek to understand what the other person most wants to avoid; what most annoys them or makes them angry or anxious.
To recognize their hot buttons, look for changes in their behavior as signals that you are on a hot topic of concern. Facial expression tells others how we feel, while our bodies suggest the intensity of our feelings.
Look for the “vital signs” of increased excitement such as dilated pupils, constricted throat that produces a higher and /or thinner voice, rapid blinking, flushed face, more rapid and shallow breathing or much less breathing and avoidance of direct eye contact when he had looked you in the eye earlier
in the conversation.
If the person usually moves and gestures little, look for the times when he has more and more rapid body movements and hand or foot changes. If he tends to be more animated, look for the times when he becomes more still.
Women, in time of increased concern, are more likely to “hand dance”, that is move the hands and forearms more.
When seated, men tend to “leak” their feelings through twitching one foot when their legs are crossed. In general, in times of conflict or other kinds of tension, women tend to move and talk more and more; men tend to move and talk less and less. Psychiatrist, Pierre Mornell wrote a book about this effect, called “Passive Men and Wild, Wild Women.”
Once you recognize when someone gets upset, you can consider what gets them upset and come closer to understand their operating manual. Now you can present your ideas in ways that address their concern, either directly or indirectly. Thus you can get someone to either take action to avoid their perceived danger or recognize how the perceived danger can be overcome or avoided to they can contemplate an “upside” opportunity.
3. People Often Don’t Understand Their Own Strong Reactions
Many times we are not aware of our underlying fears or concerns. We often go through life in a trance, reacting to earlier patterns, especially vividly negative experiences, and not knowing that we are not acting in our current best interests.
A client of mine only realized at age 42 that because she had a stocky brother who physically and verbally bullied her, she’d developed a pattern the rest of her life of what she now calls “preemptive defensiveness” around any man she met with a similarly chunky body type.
Only by understanding her previously unconscious “imprinting” from childhood could she begin to change her behavior towards new people she met.
Another colleague grew up in a household where tidiness and timeliness were paramount. He was the “black sheep” in the family who resisted. Even into adulthood, he kept a messy home and office, and was often late, especially for people he felt were trying to control him. However, until he recognized the pattern -- and his core unconscious motivation for free could he choose how he really wanted to act.
Few people are aware of how dramatically bodies shut down in times of perceived crisis or even unfamiliar situations, yet the phenomena has wide implications. In times of fear or even mild discomfort, people have diminished hearing.
They start listening to you later in the conversation and hear and remember less.
Their peripheral vision narrows in times of mild or extreme upset. Even the ability to taste goes down. Imagine a police officer who’s afraid in a dark alley, a surgeon who becomes angry during an operation or a child facing a teacher on the first day of school.
In each “shut down” situation, they are hampering their ability to perform and others may misinterpret their slowed down reactions, with possible negative consequences for several people in the situation. You may see the pattern in someone else’s hot buttons when they do not, especially if you are around that person frequently.
If this person is close to you at home or work, it pays to recognize their unstated warning signs so you appear as safe and familiar as possible to that person, so they can be open to hearing you.
Don’t assume the other person fully realizes why she is saying or acting the way she is. Her words or deeds may have very different meaning for him than for you. For example, many Americans are disturbed when another person does not look them directly in the eye while talking. Yet for some cultures, such as Spanish, direct eye contact demonstrates a lack of respect. Many shy people or those deep in thought prefer to look away.
When someone else does not act right, like you, your strongest instinct will be to make them act right by acting out a more extreme variation of your “right” behavior. For example, you may become exaggerated in your attempt to look closely at the other person so they will look at you. Instead, look to your “bottom line”, the main goal in the situation -- which may be to get a task done or to simply play.
4. We Are Far More Revealing by the Questions We Ask
Than the Answers We Give
To increase the chances of learning what is really on someone’s mind -- and thus what will motivate them to act -- know that people are far more revealing when they are the questioners.
When they are question you, rather than when you are questioning them. While we are taught to ask questions to show interest and learn more about another person, we will learn more, more deeply and quickly when we get that person to ask us questions.
How?
Explain something that engages their interest, touching on the highlights so they want to ask questions to learn more.
Respond directly but briefly to their questions so they are “in charge” and asking follow-up questions to learn still more. Note the direction that the other person’s questions take. On average, by the third question, you will know more about the nature of their deeper concern or interest than if you had “taken charge”, even with good intent to ask your own sequence of questions.
Why?
Because you don’t know what you don’t know. Your line of questions will be based on your worldview and operating manual. Their line of questions will reveal theirs. Their questions bring you closer to what’s most on their mind, especially if they could ask them in close sequence to get at what they msot wanted to know.
5. What Do You Not See in Yourself?
Want to learn more about your own blind spots and hot buttons? Or solve a nagging, recurring problem? Or have a novel approach to an opportunity pop into your mind?
Take time to do some of the apparently time-consuming daily tasks you often do too fast or hire someone else to do: garden, wash your car, walk rather than drive to an errand, build or repair it yourself.
You need these times to “sidelong” glance at the periphery of your thoughts to gain insights into your own “operating manual.”
Savor the time to stay aware in real time.
When you do a physical task, especially one that involves motion, sunshine and fresh air, your mind can move in different directions. Consider these task your “mental cross-training” to get deeper into your own psyche and imagination.
Who’s Living Your Life?
You’ll gain a second benefit from your labors.
To “anchor” that thought, here’s a story. Beth Berg created a job out of designing and maintaining rich person’s gardens in Southern California. We went sailing near Santa Catalina Island in a boat lent to her by Richard, a client who was detained in New York and could not use it. I asked her if she would ever hire someone like herself to do some of her maintenance tasks.
“I don’t think so,” she replied. “I think I would always want to take care of those basic things in my life. Because if you don’t put the work into something, you don't know the worth of it either.”
Beth said that she told Richard, her client, “We plant these flowers in your garden and most of the time you just walk by them. It’s sad, really. You don’t get the good feelings from your life that I get from your life.”
remote areas of the world to capture images of people living
lives far removed from those in the United States.
Here’s what made his experience different.
One morning, while walking through an isolated village in Bhutan, he suddenly got the idea of turning his camera over to the locals to see what they would consider significant enough to show others about themselves.
Later, when he looked at all their pictures, he noticed that most of the photos cut off people’s feet. “At first, I thought the villagers had just aimed wrong,” Zaltman says. “But it turns out that being barefoot is a sign of poverty. Even though everyone was barefoot, people wanted to hide that - -which is an important message to see.”
You never really know someone until you see the choices she makes.
We instinctively put people into categories to make the world more understandable and then get surprised by a co-worker’s sudden vehemence about a new subject. That’s the mystery of life. You can have fewer surprises, however, when you seek to understand others’ less visible, underlying motives.
What others don’t reveal is often most revealing.
What one doesn’t say often says it all.
As surrealist painter, Rene Magrite wrote, “Everything we see hides something else we want to see.” Surrealists in art and literature in the 1920s and 1930s sought to understand and portray others’ subconscious perceptions of the physical world.
Remember that movie, many years ago, in which Mary Tyler Moore plays the grieving mother of her favorite son who died, choosing to avoid her surviving son? In fact leaning away from the son and her husband (played bo Donald Sutherland) in the family photo? Ah senior moment, I can’t recall the name of this engrossing movie – can you?
That’s why it may be interesting to look back through family and friends’ photo albums – and your photo albums. See how people positioned themselves in group photos – and how they positioned photos in their photo album.
You may be more aware of your choices as you ask your family or circle of friends to join you in creating a celebratory group photo album online (wherever you are in the world), as you now can through SnapJot.
Now, if you’d like to glean some insights into why people do what they do -- so you can find the common ground upon which to work or play together - discover their unstated or even unconscious motivations for protection or pleasure
Uncover what they feel but are not saying. Here are four ways to learn more about underlying feelings -- yours and others -- so you can be more thoughtful, clear and genuine in your choices and your communication.
1. Look for the “Bare Feet” That Aren’t in the Picture
To better understand someone and how to inspire that person to take positive action, learn to recognize his unstated “hot buttons of high emotion”, positive or negative. These are the major rules to his “operating manual” -- what makes him run smoothly, bump into obstacles or simply get stuck.
People act most quickly and intensely to avoid what they fear, even if their worst fear has a much lower probability of occurring than the possibility of their dream scenario. That’s because our deepest, most innate and primeval gut instinct is to survive. We reflexively react to any appearance of danger from the most primitive, triune part of the brain, which was developed way back when “fight or flight” seemed the only options for any situation.
2. See Them in Motion to See Their Emotions
Seek to understand what the other person most wants to avoid; what most annoys them or makes them angry or anxious.
To recognize their hot buttons, look for changes in their behavior as signals that you are on a hot topic of concern. Facial expression tells others how we feel, while our bodies suggest the intensity of our feelings.
Look for the “vital signs” of increased excitement such as dilated pupils, constricted throat that produces a higher and /or thinner voice, rapid blinking, flushed face, more rapid and shallow breathing or much less breathing and avoidance of direct eye contact when he had looked you in the eye earlier
in the conversation.
If the person usually moves and gestures little, look for the times when he has more and more rapid body movements and hand or foot changes. If he tends to be more animated, look for the times when he becomes more still.
Women, in time of increased concern, are more likely to “hand dance”, that is move the hands and forearms more.
When seated, men tend to “leak” their feelings through twitching one foot when their legs are crossed. In general, in times of conflict or other kinds of tension, women tend to move and talk more and more; men tend to move and talk less and less. Psychiatrist, Pierre Mornell wrote a book about this effect, called “Passive Men and Wild, Wild Women.”
Once you recognize when someone gets upset, you can consider what gets them upset and come closer to understand their operating manual. Now you can present your ideas in ways that address their concern, either directly or indirectly. Thus you can get someone to either take action to avoid their perceived danger or recognize how the perceived danger can be overcome or avoided to they can contemplate an “upside” opportunity.
3. People Often Don’t Understand Their Own Strong Reactions
Many times we are not aware of our underlying fears or concerns. We often go through life in a trance, reacting to earlier patterns, especially vividly negative experiences, and not knowing that we are not acting in our current best interests.
A client of mine only realized at age 42 that because she had a stocky brother who physically and verbally bullied her, she’d developed a pattern the rest of her life of what she now calls “preemptive defensiveness” around any man she met with a similarly chunky body type.
Only by understanding her previously unconscious “imprinting” from childhood could she begin to change her behavior towards new people she met.
Another colleague grew up in a household where tidiness and timeliness were paramount. He was the “black sheep” in the family who resisted. Even into adulthood, he kept a messy home and office, and was often late, especially for people he felt were trying to control him. However, until he recognized the pattern -- and his core unconscious motivation for free could he choose how he really wanted to act.
Few people are aware of how dramatically bodies shut down in times of perceived crisis or even unfamiliar situations, yet the phenomena has wide implications. In times of fear or even mild discomfort, people have diminished hearing.
They start listening to you later in the conversation and hear and remember less.
Their peripheral vision narrows in times of mild or extreme upset. Even the ability to taste goes down. Imagine a police officer who’s afraid in a dark alley, a surgeon who becomes angry during an operation or a child facing a teacher on the first day of school.
In each “shut down” situation, they are hampering their ability to perform and others may misinterpret their slowed down reactions, with possible negative consequences for several people in the situation. You may see the pattern in someone else’s hot buttons when they do not, especially if you are around that person frequently.
If this person is close to you at home or work, it pays to recognize their unstated warning signs so you appear as safe and familiar as possible to that person, so they can be open to hearing you.
Don’t assume the other person fully realizes why she is saying or acting the way she is. Her words or deeds may have very different meaning for him than for you. For example, many Americans are disturbed when another person does not look them directly in the eye while talking. Yet for some cultures, such as Spanish, direct eye contact demonstrates a lack of respect. Many shy people or those deep in thought prefer to look away.
When someone else does not act right, like you, your strongest instinct will be to make them act right by acting out a more extreme variation of your “right” behavior. For example, you may become exaggerated in your attempt to look closely at the other person so they will look at you. Instead, look to your “bottom line”, the main goal in the situation -- which may be to get a task done or to simply play.
4. We Are Far More Revealing by the Questions We Ask
Than the Answers We Give
To increase the chances of learning what is really on someone’s mind -- and thus what will motivate them to act -- know that people are far more revealing when they are the questioners.
When they are question you, rather than when you are questioning them. While we are taught to ask questions to show interest and learn more about another person, we will learn more, more deeply and quickly when we get that person to ask us questions.
How?
Explain something that engages their interest, touching on the highlights so they want to ask questions to learn more.
Respond directly but briefly to their questions so they are “in charge” and asking follow-up questions to learn still more. Note the direction that the other person’s questions take. On average, by the third question, you will know more about the nature of their deeper concern or interest than if you had “taken charge”, even with good intent to ask your own sequence of questions.
Why?
Because you don’t know what you don’t know. Your line of questions will be based on your worldview and operating manual. Their line of questions will reveal theirs. Their questions bring you closer to what’s most on their mind, especially if they could ask them in close sequence to get at what they msot wanted to know.
5. What Do You Not See in Yourself?
Want to learn more about your own blind spots and hot buttons? Or solve a nagging, recurring problem? Or have a novel approach to an opportunity pop into your mind?
Take time to do some of the apparently time-consuming daily tasks you often do too fast or hire someone else to do: garden, wash your car, walk rather than drive to an errand, build or repair it yourself.
You need these times to “sidelong” glance at the periphery of your thoughts to gain insights into your own “operating manual.”
Savor the time to stay aware in real time.
When you do a physical task, especially one that involves motion, sunshine and fresh air, your mind can move in different directions. Consider these task your “mental cross-training” to get deeper into your own psyche and imagination.
Who’s Living Your Life?
You’ll gain a second benefit from your labors.
To “anchor” that thought, here’s a story. Beth Berg created a job out of designing and maintaining rich person’s gardens in Southern California. We went sailing near Santa Catalina Island in a boat lent to her by Richard, a client who was detained in New York and could not use it. I asked her if she would ever hire someone like herself to do some of her maintenance tasks.
“I don’t think so,” she replied. “I think I would always want to take care of those basic things in my life. Because if you don’t put the work into something, you don't know the worth of it either.”
Beth said that she told Richard, her client, “We plant these flowers in your garden and most of the time you just walk by them. It’s sad, really. You don’t get the good feelings from your life that I get from your life.”
Six Simple Ways to Get Along Better
You can make some simple changes in how you dress, move or speak and discover that you have fewer conflicts and greater opportunity to build enduring relationships from smoother daily interactions. From the research on our gut instinctual reactions, here's some easy-to-adopt suggestions.
1. Sidle. People are more likely to like each other, remember more of what they discuss, and agree when they "sidle," standing or sitting side by side, rather than facing each other.
Two women or a man and a woman are more likely to face each other. They literally "face off". Two men instinctively sidle. Siddling brings people "in sync." Walking and talking gets you further connected. The best time to resolve issues is while walking together to the meeting, not when you are in the meeting, sitting across from each other.
2. Look for the underlying issue. When you are arguing for more than ten minutes, you are probably not discussing the real conflict and are thus unlikely to get it resolved in the discussion. Look for the underlying issue. Read Robert Bromson's Dealing With Difficult People for ideas about how to recognize difficult behaviors and ways to respond to them.
3. Detect lying earlier. When lying, most people can put an innocent expression on their face when you ask them a question about the topic, yet few (except pathological liars) get the right timing or duration of that expression.
Ignore the expression itself when they respond but note whether they appear to put it on too soon or too late and if the duration of the expression seems off. Here your instincts will often guide you to knowing their truthfulness. To learn more about how to detect lying, read Paul Ekman's book, Telling Lies.
4. Come back to your scents. Since smell is the most directly emotional sense, bypassing much of the brain's thinking process, consider how to introduce positively natural and uplifting scents into your environment as your own "sane self-indulgence."
A naturally scented environment refreshes people, so they feel uplifted. That's why outlets as diverse as the Rainforest Cafe, Sahara Vegas Casino, Disney/Epcot Home of the Future and San Francisco Aquarium have created natural "signature scents" to avoid allergic reactions while refreshing those they serve.
People who are responsible for your work setting may consider environmental scenting someday. Consider lightly scenting your uniform with the smells that are most comfortingly familiar to you. Two hospitals in Tokyo scent bed sheets with vanilla. Since a Paris hotel began scenting their twoels with rose and citrus, guests have been giving more positive reports on the hotel staff's thoughtfulness and appearance. Vanilla, apple, and chocolate are Americans' most -liked scents.
5. Be vividly specific. A specific detail or example proves a general conclusion, not the reverse. A vivid, specific detail is memorable, while a general statement is less credible and easily forgotten. Ironically, most adult conversation and advertising is general. Children are more likely to be vividly specific and thus more memorable.
When you want to be heard and remembered, characterize your information or request with a vivid, specific detail, example, story or contrasting options. Involve words that relate to the senses. For example "beautiful color" is not as vivid as "blue" which is not as vivid as "cobalt blue."
6. Be "plainly clear." Avoid wearing patterned clothing or other detail on your clothing, especially on the upper half of the body, because it will shorten the attention span of the person with whom you are speaking.
1. Sidle. People are more likely to like each other, remember more of what they discuss, and agree when they "sidle," standing or sitting side by side, rather than facing each other.
Two women or a man and a woman are more likely to face each other. They literally "face off". Two men instinctively sidle. Siddling brings people "in sync." Walking and talking gets you further connected. The best time to resolve issues is while walking together to the meeting, not when you are in the meeting, sitting across from each other.
2. Look for the underlying issue. When you are arguing for more than ten minutes, you are probably not discussing the real conflict and are thus unlikely to get it resolved in the discussion. Look for the underlying issue. Read Robert Bromson's Dealing With Difficult People for ideas about how to recognize difficult behaviors and ways to respond to them.
3. Detect lying earlier. When lying, most people can put an innocent expression on their face when you ask them a question about the topic, yet few (except pathological liars) get the right timing or duration of that expression.
Ignore the expression itself when they respond but note whether they appear to put it on too soon or too late and if the duration of the expression seems off. Here your instincts will often guide you to knowing their truthfulness. To learn more about how to detect lying, read Paul Ekman's book, Telling Lies.
4. Come back to your scents. Since smell is the most directly emotional sense, bypassing much of the brain's thinking process, consider how to introduce positively natural and uplifting scents into your environment as your own "sane self-indulgence."
A naturally scented environment refreshes people, so they feel uplifted. That's why outlets as diverse as the Rainforest Cafe, Sahara Vegas Casino, Disney/Epcot Home of the Future and San Francisco Aquarium have created natural "signature scents" to avoid allergic reactions while refreshing those they serve.
People who are responsible for your work setting may consider environmental scenting someday. Consider lightly scenting your uniform with the smells that are most comfortingly familiar to you. Two hospitals in Tokyo scent bed sheets with vanilla. Since a Paris hotel began scenting their twoels with rose and citrus, guests have been giving more positive reports on the hotel staff's thoughtfulness and appearance. Vanilla, apple, and chocolate are Americans' most -liked scents.
5. Be vividly specific. A specific detail or example proves a general conclusion, not the reverse. A vivid, specific detail is memorable, while a general statement is less credible and easily forgotten. Ironically, most adult conversation and advertising is general. Children are more likely to be vividly specific and thus more memorable.
When you want to be heard and remembered, characterize your information or request with a vivid, specific detail, example, story or contrasting options. Involve words that relate to the senses. For example "beautiful color" is not as vivid as "blue" which is not as vivid as "cobalt blue."
6. Be "plainly clear." Avoid wearing patterned clothing or other detail on your clothing, especially on the upper half of the body, because it will shorten the attention span of the person with whom you are speaking.
Sayings for the Month
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."
~ Oscar Wilde
Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.
~ Vernon Law
Why is it when we talk to God, we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us, we're schizophrenic.
~ Lily Tomlin
"You can't say civilization isn't advancing: in every war, they kill you in a new way."
~ Will Rogers
"Successful people are very lucky. Just ask any failure."
~ Michael Levine
Some see the glass as half-empty, some see the glass as half-full. I see the glass as too big."
~ George Carlin
"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out."
~ Walter Winchell
"Write injuries in sand, kindnesses in marble."
~ French proverb
~ Oscar Wilde
Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.
~ Vernon Law
Why is it when we talk to God, we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us, we're schizophrenic.
~ Lily Tomlin
"You can't say civilization isn't advancing: in every war, they kill you in a new way."
~ Will Rogers
"Successful people are very lucky. Just ask any failure."
~ Michael Levine
Some see the glass as half-empty, some see the glass as half-full. I see the glass as too big."
~ George Carlin
"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out."
~ Walter Winchell
"Write injuries in sand, kindnesses in marble."
~ French proverb
Talk. Agree to Disagree, Without Becoming Disagreeable
The activities in Iraq and the worldwide economic instability means life feels less certain for most of us. Rather than avoiding conversations about your deepest concerns, turn to the people you most love and admire and ask to talk about what most matters to you. Say you want to become closer by being truthful with each other, listening to understand – even agreeing to disagree.
We often grow closer when we realize we can maintain our liking and respect even as we acknowledge our differences. Further, we tend to learn more about our hot buttons, not around like-minded people but around those we like who do not always agree or “act right”, like us.
Tips:
• Look to his positive intent, especially when he appears to have none.
• When you begin to grow angry, remind yourself of the core part of that other person that you most admire and like.
• As you stay open to another’s views you keep that person open and close to you.
We often grow closer when we realize we can maintain our liking and respect even as we acknowledge our differences. Further, we tend to learn more about our hot buttons, not around like-minded people but around those we like who do not always agree or “act right”, like us.
Tips:
• Look to his positive intent, especially when he appears to have none.
• When you begin to grow angry, remind yourself of the core part of that other person that you most admire and like.
• As you stay open to another’s views you keep that person open and close to you.
How Do Others Feel and Act Around You?
What’s the secret to attracting others’ respect, support and friendship?
It is not through our instinctual initial behavior with others. That is to show others our best side.
Quite the opposite. People are more inclined to like and respect you when they first get to show you their better side. As others enjoy being around you they see in you the qualities they most like in themselves – whether or not you’ve demonstrated that you, in fact, have those qualities.
Probably they will not be aware of their underlying reasoning, yet research shows that people like people who like them. *
In first meeting, women, in general, tend to become happier and higher performing when they feel liked and like the people they are around.
In first meeting, men, in general, tend to become happier and higher performing when they feel respected and respect the people they are around.
Tip:
• In first meeting or re-meeting “Go Slow to Go Fast”: first enable the other person to demonstrate or discuss her greatest talent or temperament.
It is not through our instinctual initial behavior with others. That is to show others our best side.
Quite the opposite. People are more inclined to like and respect you when they first get to show you their better side. As others enjoy being around you they see in you the qualities they most like in themselves – whether or not you’ve demonstrated that you, in fact, have those qualities.
Probably they will not be aware of their underlying reasoning, yet research shows that people like people who like them. *
In first meeting, women, in general, tend to become happier and higher performing when they feel liked and like the people they are around.
In first meeting, men, in general, tend to become happier and higher performing when they feel respected and respect the people they are around.
Tip:
• In first meeting or re-meeting “Go Slow to Go Fast”: first enable the other person to demonstrate or discuss her greatest talent or temperament.
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