Mr TS Eliot

I have spent a few days facilitating workshops that began with a celebrity speaker – Mark Inglis. The first and, I think, the only double amputee to reach the summit of Mt Everest – and return safely. I thoroughly enjoyed the story of Mark’s adventures although wasn’t inspired to follow in his footsteps! The risks are too high for me. I don’t want to remain snap-frozen near the summit if things don’t go to plan. I have other things to do that require that I remain closer to room temperature!

Anyway, one of the things Mark said got me thinking. He said he lost 10 years of his life by believing what others said to him. And underestimating what he could achieve. He mentioned this quote.

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” TS Eliot

I think this applies as much to leadership and communication as it does to life itself.

For leaders and everyone, it’s important to:

• risk sharing our own vulnerability
• risk setting high expectations
• risk showing our emotion
• risk being intimate (business appropriate!)
• risk stepping outside our own comfort zone
• risk failing
• risk stepping outside our own preconceptions of ‘who we are’.

Time and again I find when coaching people – a capacity to be much bigger/better than we thought. It seems that we always end up finding that we can go far indeed.

Inside your visual aids!

Here’s an interesting talk on TED.

 http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html

Interesting content. But I love the visual aids and how Hans gets inside them. Spectacular and funny. Good use of humour too.

Perception and Perspective

Spoke recently about what makes influence so interesting. For me, it’s because it isn’t able to be reduced to a formula. It’s subtle. Somethings are conscious, but a lot is unconscious. It can be delightfully elusive. Partly, I think because we are dealing with people’s perceptions of us and what we are doing/saying.

Where do our perceptions come from? They come from our perspectives. The sum total of our experiences extracted to form meaning, values and beliefs. From different perspectives, we come to have different perceptions. None of us are dealing with reality, just our perception of reality. The scary part is that the more our beliefs, meanings and values are embedded, the harder it is for us to see anything different. Perspectives are quite hard to change.

That’s why the most important influencing skill is to put ourselves into another’s perspective. From there it’s easy to see the path to where we want to move people. Because we can understand how we will be perceived.

Challenging Personal Paradigms

A friend and I are exploring a new business venture at the moment. It’s creative and we are both finding it very stimulating. We have been meeting with people in the industry and have been stuck by how people are captured by the prevailing paradigm. We have a different perspective. And it’s very difficult for people to see the opportunity from their perspective.

Tomorrow we’re pitching the opportunity to a critical partner. I need to remember to pitch the opportunity from their perspective or paradigm first. Before I try to change it. Then, I think I’ll try to use analogies to see if I can shift the paradigm. If I can choose analogies that are close enough to their experience. Maybe, I can get them to see things differently. I’ll let you know how I get on.

But this just leads me to my real point. What are the paradigms we have of ourselves? That may not be right. Or may not serve us. I often bump into these when coaching people for presentations. I get them to do something different. Something they are not used to doing. It may be, being more animated. And they say … “That’s just not me! I want to be myself”. Right. I want people to be themselves too, but I don’t accept that we are our behaviours. Our behaviours have grown out of the set of our past experiences. And how we’ve interpreted those past experiences. We can still be ourselves doing something different.

If I can normally present in a semi-comatose manner that bores the living daylights out of people. I can present in a more animated and energetic manner. Do we really think our audience will say … “hey that’s not you. Go back to the old boring self we knew and fell asleep to”

This is just an example. Generalise to all your behaviour. Ask the question  … What behaviours do I need, at this moment, to achieve my objective?

Speaking “in the moment”

Here’s a great video clip of Obama speaking with his campaign team a week ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnhmByYxEIo&eurl=http://7.gmodules.com/ig/ifr?view=home&url=http://www.google.com/ig/modules/youtube_videos.xml&nocache=0&up_pr

It’s worth commenting on many things about this talk. I’ve leave you to reach your own insights, but please share them (via this blog hopefully). I’ll make one observation though.

Notice how powerful it is to just speak to people. Submerge the ego, be in the moment and speak from the heart. Elsewhere on this blog, I mentioned Mohammed Ali talking after his Rumble in the Jungle ( on ‘When we were Kings’ DVD). Ali speaks with that same sense of humanity. It’s the power of the human spirit.

It’s informal, spontaneous, real and he knows what he wants to say. What do you want to say?

Working your craft

I talked with someone today. We discussed some coaching for a communication issue. I suggested two sessions and then review progress. She said that after two sessions, it was probably just practise from then on.

It’s never just practise.

If you think about actors, or singers, or musicians – they work on their craft for a lifetime. Well, the craft of a leader or manager is communication. Work on it for life. And work on it with someone you can trust to give you honest and constructive feedback.

 

Keys to influence

I had coffee today with a client. We ended up talking about the importance of influence in the public sector. It reminded me of my first boss when I started working in IT&T. He told me there were two keys to selling.

1. Show up – go and see people.
2. Stay – spend time with them. And I’d add a third, said my client …
3. Shut-up

That’s good advice for selling or influencing in the private or public sector.

Bernie’s 1st Law: Xing to Xed

I wrote a while back about the book by Ed de Bono – “How to be more Interesting” and suggested he should have written a book called how to be more Interested. I am now ready to generalise this as a rule for communication.

Bernie’s first rule of communication:   xing to xed (pronounced zing to zed)

If you want to be more interesting, start by being more interested.

If you want to be more inspiring, start by being more inspired.

If you want to be more influencing, start by being more influenced.

If you want to be more compelling, start by being more compelled.

If you want to be more convincing, start by being more convinced.

If you want to be more engaging, start by being more engaged.

If you want to be more moving, start by being more moved.

If you want to be more leading, start by being more led.

Get the idea? Try it and let me know.

 

Only the good, doubt!

I had coffee today with someone who is doubting her ability to present effectively. It made me think about self doubt. It seems to me that only the good, doubt themselves. There are lots of people who are supremely confident in their own incompetence. They are blithely unaware of their own failings.

So could self doubt be a good thing? Yes, I think it implies a willingness to self interogate. To confront one’s own strenghts and weaknesses. To be less complacent. To be driven to be better. Which reminds me of a conversation with a NZ entrepreneur many years ago.

I was working for Geoff and he said to me “Bernie, we need to work out exactly what we do that works so we can replicate it in all our offices.” Wanting to be provocative I’d said “No we don’t – better to wake up every morning with a sense of curiosity to find out why it works and why it might stop”. I think I was right, better to be thinking about the question rather than becoming complacent with the answer.

But just as self doubt can be good, it can also be debilitating. I think top performers often doubt themselves but it doesn’t stop them. They have the courage and commitment to keep going.

So here’s my advice. If you suffer from bouts of self doubt – congratulations! Keep going, keep getting better. If you don’t, you may be complacent. You may already be under performing, you just don’t know it.

Self doubt + Courage = High performance!

Telling a story

Story telling as a leadership skill has become a popular topic recently. A story is a powerful way of subtly getting across a message. As leaders, personal stories can be a more real and more compelling way to communicate. They can also communicate your humanity (lest they forget!). And you can stand out from all the other boring communicators who think they’re getting their message across. 

Stories are everywhere. so, if you haven’t got a personal one at hand, pick up a newspaper or magazine and use one in there. And, keep the following three steps in mind.

1. First, describe an event or incident. Keep it focused on a specific time and describe it as vivdly as possible – paint a picture, talk about how it felt, what was being said and even any smells that were present. Have your audience imagine what it was like being there.
2. Second, briefly describe the point of the story. There may be several points so pick the one that is most relevant to your particular communication situation.
3. Finally, make the point relevant to your audience by telling them why that point is particularly important at this time. 

Keep those three steps in mind. It’s surprisingly easy to be an effective story-teller at work.