Jeremy Nagel

White lies as social lubricant

2011-12-31T00:52:00.000+01:00

Have you ever noticed how we lie to each other? The classic example is that scene at a clothes shop:

"Honey does this look good on me?"
"Hell yeah! You look amazing!"

Why do we tell white lies?
I think the reason why people tell white lies is because they're scared of offending the other person. They're worried that if they tell the truth, the other person will get upset. Why would they think that? Because they themselves are afraid of the truth. In my opinion, Australians are crap at giving and receiving feedback. We lash out at successful people, cutting them down with harsh words.

Crab in the bucket syndrome
The Filipinos have a different analogy to 'tall poppy syndrome' that I really like. They call it 'crab in the bucket syndrome'. Apparently if you stick a bunch of crabs in a bucket, a bucket that any one crab could easily climb out of, none of the crabs will get out because they pull each other off the wall as soon as they go to escape. In Australia (and this is a massive generalisation), we love to attack each other. We pounce on slight flaws and grudgingly admit victories. It starts from an early age in the school yard. Teasing turns into bullying and adults develop a pathological fear of receiving feedback.

Lying to avoid giving honest feedback
And so rather than give honest feedback that could help someone grow, we tell white lies. "It looks lovely". "You're doing great". It's like fast food. It tastes good at the time, but it leaves you feeling empty. Did they really mean that?

Lying because we don't care or can't care
Some of the time that's appropriate. If you give someone honest feedback, you owe them a duty of care to follow that up and make sure they take the feedback well. We know that most people struggle to accept feedback. Most people take it badly. Therefore, it is your responsibility to stay with them and coach them rather than just hurling criticism at them and walking away, hands in your pockets, whistling to yourself.

Picking your battles
This kind of coaching takes effort and time. Often you don't have the time or energy to really help someone improve. In that case, maybe a white lie is appropriate. It answers their question without committing you to helping them. I struggle with this mindset. If someone genuinely asks for help, I want to help them, not brush them off with an untruthful affirmation.

Do they really want honesty?
I think the reason most people react badly to feedback is they're not ready for it. Honest feedback can feel like having a bucket of cold water thrown over your head. If you're ready for it, the cold water is refreshing. If you're unprepared, it makes you angry and might even give you a heart attack!

I've had a few instances where I've given someone honest feedback and they have taken it really badly. Hell I've taken feedback badly myself. There were times during my honours year where I stuffed up experiments. All I wanted to do was go outside and walk off some of my frustration but my supervisor pulled me out of the lab and proceeded to tell me exactly what I'd done wrong and how to fix it. It was helpful and useful feedback, but I was in no state to listen. I'd walk out with tears in my eyes thinking "Why is she so mean!?"

Therefore, I reckon it's important to get permission before giving honest feedback. I now ask "do you want my honest opinion?". And I really ask it. I don't just throw out the question and jump into the feedback immediately. I let the question hang in the air. I gauge their reaction. If they look hesitant, I ask again.

White lies or compliments?
Of course, some of the time, critical feedback is not necessary. It's entirely appropriate to focus on how good the dress looks instead of the ugly stitching around that button that only you would notice. After being trained as a scientist with an emphasis on 'critical thinking', I often fall into the trap of only seeing what's wrong and not seeing what's right.

In any case, the same thing applies to compliments as applies to criticism. If the compliment isn't sincere and honest, then it comes across as fake. As a lie.

It's not what you say, it's how you say it
Have you heard of the Mehrabian principle [qqq]? David Mehrabian did some research back in the 70s. He looked at how interesting students found lecturers. His results showed that it wasn't the words the lecturers used, it was the tonality and body language that mattered. From those results, he inferred that meaning from communication is broken down like this:

Words: 7%
Body language: 55%
Tonality: 38%

Keep this in mind when giving compliments or feedback. If your voice tone doesn't match what your saying, then people will interpret your sincere compliments as lies. A weird trap that I've fallen into is laughing when giving a compliment. It completely confuses the message. What I intended to be a compliment was probably perceived as a white lie.

Specific makes memorable
When people give me compliments or feedback, I almost always discard them if they are general or abstract. Mentally, I class them as white lies not as true statements. For a compliment to be meaningful to me, the other person has to point out a concrete example, rather than making a blanket statement.

The overall message: white lies are all about perception
After writing this post, I've now crystallised my thoughts on white lies. They are statements that are purposefully vague. They are lies of omission. They could be true but only because no evidence is included to the contrary.

What do you think of white lies? Do you think they are appropriate in a networking situation?

Gracefully exiting a conversation

2011-12-31T00:08:00.001+01:00

How to be extraordinarily rude
A few months ago, I committed a conversational faux pas. I was at a screening of Connected the film, hanging out afterwards with David Hood and some other peeps from the Collaboratory. It was getting late, and I realised I needed to skedaddle or else I wouldn't get home before 1AM. David was explaining the Open IDEO collaboratory concept to someone and I was tensing up. I'd spent the whole of yesterday afternoon working on the project with David and didn't feel like I needed to listen to the explanation.

"Just wait until there's a gap in the conversation" I told myself. "Just wait...calm...zen.......ARGH!!! This is taking too long". So halfway through one of David's sentences, I said "Gotta go!" and ran off.

It was effective. I got out of there right away. But man I must have looked like a PRICK! Sorry David!

How to exit a conversation gracefully
I was reflecting on how I could have done that better. I'm sure a lot of people have similar problems. You're locked in a conversation with someone who has a lot to say and you want to be somewhere else. The question is, how can you end the conversation without offending the other person?

What not to do
Let's start off with three things not to do:

1. Interrupt them mid-flow: only do this if you want to look like a PRICK. It's rude. If you're in a group, it causes them to lose their train of thought.

2. Lie badly: a temptation might be to come up with some excuse for why you need to leave. If you're clever, this can work. White lies are useful social lubricant. But if your lie is obviously bogus, the other person will see through it and think less of you.

3. Poorly executed distractions: You might fake a phone call, or point to the window "Look out there!" and then artfully duck away. If you're really good at this, you might pull it off, but most of the time, people will see through your illusion and grasp the underlying message "I don't want to spend any more time with you". I think this is unfair on the other person. It's a veiled insult. They will be left confused. Was that really a work phone call, or did they just press the ringtone button on their phone?

What you can do
The issue I have with techniques two and three is you are not being authentic and you are abandoning your duty of care to the other person. You're leaving them all alone and forcing them to fend for themselves. For many people, talking to strangers is really difficult and plucking up the courage to talk to you was a big deal for them. Here are two techniques that allows you to leave gracefully without letting them down.

Be a host
I reckon the most graceful way to leave a conversation is to be a host. Think about a host at a dinner party. They are constantly floating around, matching people up and nudging people to start a conversation. After they've connected two people up, they flutter away. And do you resent them for that? No, you recognise that it is the host's role to do that and you even develop warm fuzzy feelings towards them for matching you up with someone.

Introduce them to someone
So in a networking context, what you can do is suddenly say "Oh you have to meet Jack!" and drag them over to meet Jack. You then introduce them to Jack and explain exactly why the two should talk. If you do it well, both Jack and the conversational bore you were stuck with will love you for it. Hopefully they are highly compatible and will have lots to talk about. They'll think nice thoughts about you for making the connection. Meanwhile, you're now free to leave the conversation and find someone else to talk to or bugger off if you want to leave altogether.

What if you don't know anyone else there?
This is where authenticity comes into play. If you feel like they're dominating your time at the event and you'd like to meet other people, it's perfectly fine to say "I've really enjoyed talking to you, but I'm conscious that there are a lot of other people here. I think it would be good for both of us to go meet some other people. Shall we go and join a group somewhere?". The key here is that you're not abandoning them. You're going with them, so they feel comfortable.

Yet they have still got that subtle message that they were monopolising your time a bit and hopefully they'll learn for next time.

What about in group conversations?
It's much easier to leave a group conversation than a 1-1 conversation. The other group members can keep on talking without you and will not be offended if you leave. Depending on whether you are sticking around to talk to other people, you can say one of two things:

1. You're sticking around:
The easiest thing to do here is create an excuse. "I'm going to dash off to the men's room." or "I'm going to go grab a drink". Make sure you wait for a break in the conversation unlike my rude behaviour:P And make sure you actually go do what you said you would do.

2. You're skedaddling:
This is even easier. Just say your goodbye and dash off. "It was great to meet you all, but I've got to run to go pick up the kids"

What techniques do you use to gracefully exit a conversation? Any ideas on how to execute a distraction artfully:P?

Why Nimble.com kicks arse

2011-12-30T23:25:00.001+01:00

Falling out of touch
A while ago, I realised I was finding it hard to keep track of all my friends and acquaintances. Some of them were on facebook, some were on LinkedIn, some were in my Google contacts, some were in my phone. It was a mess! And I also intuitively felt that I was losing contact with many of them because I wasn't regularly connecting with them. Furthermore, when I'd go to networking events, I'd end up with a whole bunch of business cards from people I wanted to stay in contact with, and I wouldn't know what to do with them.

I was looking for a solution. A customer relationship management (CRM) system sounded good, but most of them were expensive and none of them seemed to integrate facebook or LinkedIn that well. They seemed to be designed for companies rather than individuals.

What is a contact management system
In Keith Ferrazi's book, Never Eat Alone, he talks about setting up a contact management system (CMS) that gives him reminders to 'ping' people regularly. It sounded like a great idea. It also sounded like Keith had developed his system himself. I went looking to see if anyone else had come up with an off-the-shelf CMS.

I found a few:
- Network Hippo
- Nimble
- Rapportive

Review of the top 3 CMSs
I've played around with those three systems. What I was looking for was a system that was super easy to use, that integrated in all of my different contact databases (facebook, LinkedIn, gmail) and provided followup reminders.

After a few months, I've decided that Nimble.com is the winner in my eyes.

Why Nimble.com kicks arse
I prefer Nimble over the other CMSs because it is super-automated and super-easy to use. Rapportive and Network Hippo require you to manually refresh your contact list (Rapportive even makes you go to LinkedIn, click export and then import the file - that's way too much work for me).

The unified inbox
The killer functionality is Nimble's 'unified inbox'.

You get one inbox with all of your emails, facebook messages, twitter DMs and LinkedIn messages. This rocks because it means I save heaps of time. Instead of having to go into four different systems, I only have to go into one. What's more, I find it helps me focus on achieving Inbox Zero. If I log into Facebook to check my messages, there's a big temptation to look at the News Feed and before long I'm way off track! Nimble.com is about 1-1 communication and nothing else.

Task management
I've played around with a few task management apps. In my experience, a lot of my tasks come from emails. I wanted a quick and easy way to turn an email into a task. Previously, I'd been using Remember The Milk. It's quite good and there is the ability to forward emails to your RTM account. But it's still a bit clunky for me.

Nimble whacks in task management with your inbox. You can turn a facebook message, an email, a twitter DM into a task really easily.

It also makes it easy to associate a task with a person. I find that I'm far more motivated to get something done if I'm doing it for someone. For example, before Christmas, my job was to come up with the Kris Kringle list (I've built an app to do it). I'd been putting it off until I associated the task with Mum. Suddenly I was doing it for Mum and because I care about my Mum, I did the task right away.

What I don't like about Nimble
There is one key feature that Nimble doesn't do yet: Follow Up reminders. It's not a deal breaker for me, but it would make it a far better app.

I'll split this into two types: ping reminders and waiting on reminders.

Ping reminders
Keith Ferrazzi advocates the idea of 'pinging' people regularly. He sends out something like 200 emails/phone calls/SMSs per day to stay in contact with his massive database of friends, customers and business partners. His argument is that by sending a short message (pinging), people will keep you 'top of mind' and if there's an opportunity that they come across, they'll flick it through to you because they've been thinking about you.

The way Keith does this is he sets up reminders in his contact management system. He'll set a contact frequency for everyone in his database. Some people he might ping every 2 weeks (the ones doing exciting things that he wants to be part of). Others he might ping every 6 months to check in and see if they've started doing something more exciting:P

Nimble sort of allows you to do this. You can create tasks "Ping so and so in 6 weeks". It works but it's a bit clunky. There's a feature request for Nimble to add in a more streamlined ping reminder system. Hopefully they'll get that working soon.

Waiting on reminders
An app that has revolutionised my workflow is Boomerang for Gmail [qqq]. With BFG (hey there's even a Roald Dahl link there!), you can set up automated follow up reminders for emails you've sent. For example, I had a potential client who I wanted to build some software for. I sent them an email and ticked the box in BFG "follow up in 4 days if they don't reply". This is a lifesaver because previously I'd send emails and then forget to follow up to make sure the other person read it and actioned it.

In a sales context, this is really important. Research shows that a lot of the time, people don't respond to the first message. It can take 5-7 emails/phone calls/conversations until someone will buy something from you. Many people give up after the first non-response. They feel like 'silence = rejection'. It's more likely that the other person was just super busy and didn't have time to read or reply to your message.

With BFG, I can set up these response checks so that I can follow up if someone hasn't replied to an email. It would be great if Nimble had a similar feature. You can sort of do this by adding a task to follow up. But this is a bit clunky compared to the ease of Boomerang for Gmail. I've lodged a feature request and hopefully Nimble will add this to its arsenal.

Conclusion: use Nimble.com
I highly recommend Nimble for everyone who wants to get multiple inboxes under control and improve their network weaving ability.

Cure fear of rejection

2011-12-18T03:00:00.001+01:00

Rejection hurts

One of the major reasons people don’t network is because they’re afraid of rejection. “What if I go and I don’t meet anyone?”, “What if I ask someone for help and they say no?”.

This is a very legitimate feeling. Rejection hurts. As humans, we are wired to avoid pain. It’s no surprise that sales jobs have one of the highest turnover rates. Rejection is an inevitable part of sales and most people can’t deal with it.

Let’s flip that over: most people can’t deal with rejection. That means that if you get good at overcoming rejection, you will get results that most people don’t achieve. There has been research done into the life success of people based on their ability to deal with rejection. What the research shows is The Power of No. There is a direct correlation between the number of times people say ‘No’ to you and your success in life. It makes intuitive sense for salespeople. Let’s say you’re selling an attachment for vacuum cleaners that allows people to shave their hair in the comfort of their own home (yes this is a real product!).

If you knock on 50 people’s doors and 10% of them buy the product that means you’re going to get 5 sales in exchange for 45 door slams. If you knock on 100 people’s doors, you’ll get 10 sales in exchange for 90 door slams. The key success predictor for sales people is how many times they’re willing to get the door slammed in their face.

You are a salesperson

This isn’t just the case for people whose job title is salesperson. The fact is, everyone is selling something. Want a promotion? You’re selling yourself. Want to change people’s attitudes towards climate change? You’re selling environmental consciousness. I would encourage you to start seeing yourself as a salesperson and take on rejection as a badge of honour. Rather than striving to succeed, strive to fail. Strive to get as many people say no to you as you can. Rejection is not failure, it’s part of the process.

Use rejection to boost your self confidence and motivation

Jason Comely has an interesting take on rejection: he’s come up with Rejection Therapy, a game for building self confidence and motivation by getting rejected. The basic idea is to get rejected at least once per day for a month. Players take on rejection challenges: asking something that makes the player feel very uncomfortable. This might be asking for a pay raise, asking strangers if they can take their photograph, selling a product on the street, asking to go on television.

Players of the game have reported that they have improved their self confidence because they are so used to getting rejected that it no longer hurts. What’s more, they find that a lot of the time, the other person will say Yes! Jason managed to double his pay rate by just asking.

The science

This technique has a sound basis in behaviour therapy. It falls under Thomas Stampfl’s Flooding method which behavioural therapists still use today. The underlying principle is that if a person is exposed to their fear for long enough, they will quite soon become desensitised to it.

Your challenge: start getting rejected

If you’re serious about becoming a superconnector, you’re going to have to overcome the fear of rejection. Where this relates to networking is contacting your aspirational contacts. A lot of people will avoid getting in touch with the people on their networking wish list because they’re afraid of getting a ‘No’. My advice is to challenge yourself to get some ‘Nos’.

How many ‘Nos’ will you get this month?

Boosting reputation online

2011-12-18T02:53:00.000+01:00

Who are you anyway?

Before the days of the internet, reputation wasn’t something you could measure easily. But now thanks to Google and LinkedIn, your reputation is very easy to see.

Vanity searches

Do this exercise now: jump onto google and do a search for your own name. What comes up first? Is there anything about you on the first page? Before I started the personal branding game, I was competing with a TV actor of the same name. There was nothing about me for the first two pages of Google. Most people are in this same category.

LinkedIn

On LinkedIn, there is a ‘recommendation’ feature that allows other people to say nice things about you. The theory is that if people are prepared to go to the effort of writing a recommendation for you, then you must have done some pretty special work. Most people have no recommendations on their profile, meaning their reputation is neutral. Really it’s worse than that because if you have no-one backing up what you say about yourself, then it looks like you’re lying! You can imagine the dialog: “Yeah right! As if he really managed 42 people.. I don’t believe him one bit!”

How to boost your online reputation

For personal branding beginners, I think the best way to improve your reputation on Google and LinkedIn is to develop a solid LinkedIn profile. You can do more advanced things like start a blog, get an about.me page, look into keyword marketing, etc. but let’s start with the basics because they deliver 80% of the benefits.

Why use LinkedIn?

LinkedIn profiles come up in google search results. If someone wants to find you, they will usually look on LinkedIn. (It’s the first thing I do when I’m meeting someone for the first time). The advantage of LinkedIn is that you control the content. Unlike a newspaper where someone could write something nasty about you and you can’t do very much about it, LinkedIn is yours to write whatever you feel like.

Despite that freedom, there’s a perception that information on LinkedIn is authentic and credible. Because it’s public and because other people can back it up via recommendations (we’ll cover that in a moment), the information on LinkedIn is generally trustworthy.

How do you use LinkedIn?

First things first, create your profile and connect with people on there. There are lots of guides on LinkedIn for that, so I won’t take up space in this post reinventing the wheel. What I will emphasise is the importance of recommendations. Recommendations are your reputation. If you have no recommendations (like most people on LinkedIn), then your profile lacks substance and people will doubt the information on your profile.

How do you get recommendations?

Let’s revisit that fundamental principle of reciprocity: to get what you want, give it out first. Therefore, to get recommendations, you must give recommendations to other people first. Stop reading this book and write recommendations for five people. I recommend you make it a weekly routine to write a recommendation for at least one person.

How to write really bad recommendations

Recommendations are a form of compliment. Given that most people are bad at giving compliments, it’s not a surprise that most people do a poor job of writing recommendations. The main reason why most people get recommendations wrong is because they’re too general. There are sites on the internet that offer a “LinkedIn Recommendation Generator” service (I’m not giving you links because it’s a terrible idea!). Here is an example of output from a generator:

“Anyone who works with her can attest to her efficient and effective communication, creative thinking, professional business acumen and ethical conduct. Anna has provided great leadership and it has been a real pleasure to be professionally associated with a consummate professional like Anna! Anna is a super enthusiastic and eager to learn leader and manager. Anna is highly skilled at successfully handling Senior Management responsibilities. Anna is a proven person who does and says what she does.”

The scary thing is, a lot of humans will write recommendations like this! General recommendations are meaningless.

The computer doesn’t know a thing about Anna and it’s immediately obvious. There are no specifics. We don’t really believe that Anna is an efficient and effective communicator because the computer hasn’t provided any evidence to back it up. If I were Anna, I would feel offended to receive a recommendation like that because it’s pretty apparent that the computer doesn’t know her from a power cable!

How to write good recommendations

From this example, it’s pretty clear what you need to do to write good recommendations and give good compliments: you need to be specific. Give examples that demonstrate how and why someone is effective. These kind of recommendations are meaningful because you can only write them if you know the person well.

Ask for recommendations

Some of them will write you a recommendation back without prompting. Others need to be nudged. Send a pleasant note asking them if they could write you a recommendation. Make it easy for them and suggest some things they could include in the recommendation. It might sound a bit pushy, but in life, if you don’t ask, you don’t generally get.

What do you do to boost your reputation online?

Journaling after networking events

2011-12-18T02:48:00.000+01:00

I am a big fan of journaling. I have made a habit of journaling after every significant event. If I go to a dinner party and meet five people, I will take 10 minutes afterwards to get my journal out and write down what I learnt about each of the people and whether I want to catch up with them again. This review and reflection process is very important to me.

Why review and reflect?

Research done on CEOs found that one of their common shared traits was making space for decompression time. Many of them took up spiritual fitness practices which allowed them to be alone with their thoughts, e.g. meditation or journaling or exercise alone. This time alone is so important for making sense of the world. A lot of the time, we live our lives fully in the present and future. We only think about what’s happening now and what’s happening next.

Journaling after networking events

This means we miss out on learning lessons from what has already happened to us. This is especially the case when networking. You might meet five people at an event. If you don’t take the time afterwards to reflect on what happened during the conversation and where you could go from there, then that time is wasted.

This is especially the case when you’re new to networking. If you haven’t developed the skills to be a great networker you’re going to make a lot of mistakes. This is perfectly ok. I believe that the only way to truly learn is to go out in the real world and make mistakes. You can read this book, but that won’t make you a master. You’ll be ‘book smart’, but ‘street dumb’.

On the other hand, making mistakes is a bad thing if you don’t learn from your mistakes. ‘Fail fast, fail often and fail small’. One of my favourite quotes is ‘Filter for lessons’. You can get some new ideas from reading a book, but ultimate learning happens when you can find lessons from your own experiences and translate them into your own words.

Common objections to review and reflection

I don't have enough time!

Sometimes I hear people say “I don’t have the time to review and reflect”. If that were me, I would be questioning that statement heavily because it sounds like a limiting belief. In effect, what those people are saying is they don’t value review and reflection time. It is a question of priorities. If you don’t believe that review and reflection has any value then you won’t make the time for it. The best evidence for the value of review and reflection is the biography of CEOs, many of whom allocate time for review and reflection. Is this a causative relationship? It would be almost impossible to tell. Maybe they’re wasting their time and they would achieve more if they just got on with their life.

Personally I believe that it is a causative relationship, however, I am willing to accept your viewpoint that it might just be a waste of time. In answer to that statement, I would therefore suggest that you give journaling the benefit of the doubt. Have a go at it. Do it for a week and see whether you get any value out of it. If you see no benefits after that time, then abandon it. As with all advice, I’d suggest that you question everything I write here. I am not an omniscient guru.

I don't like journaling

The other factor may be that you just don’t like journaling. Some people prefer to do review and reflection by talking to people. If that’s the case, you could have a conversation with a close friend or a spouse. If you go to a networking event with a wingman, it makes a lot of sense to review and reflect with them afterwards.

How do you review and reflect

Every night I free write answers to two questions:

1. “What was really great today?”

2. “What could I improve?”

By doing this, I can improve my performance for next time. Being more self aware is vital. Without this, you will keep making the same mistakes over and over again. Getting feedback from other people is useful, and I recommend that you both keep yourself open to feedback and even request it from other people, however, your own feedback can often be more insightful and more real than feedback from other people.

Here is a template for a journal page you could use:

Who did I meet?	What did we talk about?	How will I follow through?

My performance:

What did I do well?	What could I improve?

Do you keep a journal? Do you make time after networking events to process who you met?

The greatest gift you can give someone is your presence

2011-12-18T02:36:00.000+01:00

“One of the greatest gifts you can give someone is your presence”.

What is being present?

When I first came across the word ‘present’, I didn’t get it. Doesn’t that just mean showing up on time? That’s what the school system taught me. If I was in the classroom at 8:30AM, I was present. Otherwise, I was absent and needed a note from my parents.

Mental absenteeism

But presence is far more than physical presence. I think a major block to success in networking is ‘mental absenteeism’. Someone is standing next to you with the appearance of listening. But they’re not really listening. They’re thinking about all the things they have to do when they get back to work. I was guilty of this a lot of the time. I was constantly thinking about what work I needed to do and subconsciously sabotaging myself because I was questioning whether I should even be here talking to this person at this time.

Negative self talk

Another kind of absenteeism is negative self talk. If you’re thinking about yourself, about how you’re performing then you’re not really there for the other person. I used to have this all the time. I’d be thinking ‘Wow I can’t believe I’m actually talking to this person. This is incredible. I hope they like me’. I had my attention on myself and not on the other person.

How to sabotage yourself in a conversation

This is a recipe for a failed conversation. If you have your attention inwards rather than on the other person then you won’t be able to deeply listen to what they’re saying and you’ll miss the hidden messages that lie between their words. You’ll have superficial conversations.

Mindset around presence

Part of it is a mindset thing. If you’re approaching the conversation thinking that the objective of the conversation is to ‘get your point across’, to ‘be right’, then you’ll fail. You’ll be so busy thinking about what to say next that you won’t really take in what the other person is saying.

Conversational narcissism

I used to do this all the time. I’d have narcissistic conversations where when the other person stopped talking, I’d scramble for something that I wanted to say about myself to fill in the gap. I was focused inwards so that I didn’t give them my full attention.

How to obtain full presence

There are a few parts to obtaining full presence.

1. Make the decision to be present: Before the conversation, block out your negative self talk by repeating the affirmation “I am here to connect with the other person, not to convince them. I want to understand them.”

2. Get rid of what’s on your mind:
That mental to do list is the presence killer for a lot of people. I love what David Allen says on this topic. Have you read his book “Getting things done?”. It’s a book about productivity but it’s much more than that. He talks about how by writing your todo list down on paper or in the computer, you free up your short term memory. This allows you to concentrate on what someone else is saying rather than on what you need to do afterwards. You know you’ve got it written down.

3. Relax: Similar to having a mental todo list on your mind, you may also have negative self talk running through your mind. I allowed myself to do this a lot. The solution for me was to take up relaxation practices. Things like running help but more than that, what I find really works for me is journaling. I enjoy writing and find that this helps me achieve clarity on my thoughts. I will write down how I’m feeling. If I’m feeling anxious, I will write down “I’m anxious and the reason is..”. Being aware of the reason why I’m feeling anxious allows me to release that feeling. I go in fresh and unencumbered. This is really important when you’ve got several meetings in a row. You need decompression time or else you will be carrying in the feelings from the previous meeting into the next one. I like to go for a walk outside, do some deep breathing and some journaling. I believe that it’s important to take some time out from living life to critically examining it.

What strategies do you use to be fully present? What kind of a difference has presence made in your life?

Social proofing in networking

2011-12-18T02:32:00.000+01:00

The Cold Call

Imagine this. You’re at home, reading this book with a cup of tea. Suddenly the phone rings RRING RRINNG, breaking your concentration. You grimace and mentally weigh up the odds of it being someone legitimate. “Argh better take it” you think. You pick up the phone. On the other end of the phone is a man with an Indian accent. “Oh no! What does he want?”. You write him off instantly – he’s just another telemarketer. He says something about lower internet bills but you don’t even listen to what he has to say. As soon as he stops speaking, you make an excuse and hang up the phone exasperatedly.

Warming up a sale

Now let’s compare that to another scenario. You’re having coffee with your friend and start complaining about your internet provider. “The damn company is so unresponsive. My modem is broken but they won’t help. They actually charge money to answer my calls. What terrible customer service!”

Your friend smiles sympathetically. “Maybe you’d be interested in the provider I’ve been using for the last six months. They’re really great. I haven’t had any problems with my service at all and they’re much cheaper than the last company I was with.”

You lean in “ooh. That sounds good. What’s the name of the company? I’ll give them a call.”

When you ring up, you speak to a man with an Indian accent who very politely and professionally registers you as a new customer.

What was the difference here?

In the first scenario, the cold call, you flat out rejected the poor guy. You had a preconception of who he was and what he wanted and you refused to find out more. That’s not an indictment against you by the way. I find cold callers pretty annoying most of the time.

In the second example, one of your friends recommended the same company. Rather than rejecting the cold call, you proactively called the company up because of social proof. In these modern times of unlimited choices, decision making is a very long process. If you were to analyse every internet provider out there, researching customer reviews and value for money, it would take hours or even days. Some people are willing to do this. However, the majority of people will take a shortcut: seeking out the recommendations of their friends.

People buy based on social proof

Rather than relying on hard evidence, social proof is often sufficient to help you make a decision. It all comes down to credibility of sources. If someone you trust recommends a product or service, you’re far more likely to take their advice than if a stranger on the site recommends something. A single recommendation from a trusted friend is probably worth more in your eyes than 100 reviews on an internet review site. You don’t necessarily trust these people’s opinions because you don’t know them.

The danger of social proofing

Social proofing is a cognitive bias. Most of the time it helps you make better decisions. Other times you may make a worse decision. You see, just because you trust your friend, it doesn’t mean they’re an expert in the area. So when a friend recommends something, be aware that you’re likely to view their recommendation in a much more positive light than you would if they were a stranger. Be slightly critical about their recommendation. How much research did they do? Are there recommendations usually solid?

Social proof in networking

You can use social proof in your favour when networking. Essentially the objective of networking is to get inside the trust circle of highly respected people. If someone who is well respected in their community recommends your work, then you’ll suddenly have job offers and customers throwing themselves at you.

The question then is, how do you become respected? A big part of respectability is likeability. If someone likes you, then they’re more likely to trust you. The other part of respectability is trustworthiness. If you’re honest, if you do good things for the community, if you’re reliable, then people are more likely to trust your recommendation.

How to use this information

To me, it's pretty clear: you want as much social proof for your personal brand and your company as possible. That raises the question: how can you get social proof for yourself?

I believe the answer is reciprocity. You get what you give out. So make a commitment to recommend other people, whenever you sense an opportunity. If you're at a networking event and someone has an obvious need and you know someone who could fill that need, connect them up.

An immediate action step is to give other people recommendations on LinkedIn.

How will you use this information? How will you take advantage of social proofing?

Does Brain Training work?

2011-12-17T01:03:00.000+01:00

I came across Lumosity.com this morning. It's a brain-training website where you can play games that supposedly help improve your short term memory, enhance your peripheral vision and even upgrade your fluid intelligence (the ability to solve new problems and learn new things).

Great marketing
I want some of that! What sold me was the claim that playing on Lumosity could help me remember names. I am focusing on becoming more likeable at the moment and remembering names definitely helps there.

A lot of fun

I spent 10 minutes playing some of the games this morning. They were fun and challenging. I really struggled with the birdwatching game. Birds pop up on the screen at the same time as a number. To get points, you have to click on where the bird was and what number showed up. I found when the game sped up, I couldn't focus on both things at the same time, which comes down to poor peripheral vision. Poor peripheral vision affects me in the real world (I find peripheral vision is a good proxy for my ability to focus my attention), so I will be very interested to see whether becoming a better 'birdwatcher' will translate out into real life.

Progress over time

What I really like is that Lumosity.com tracks your progress. I'm not ashamed to say that I'm addicted to self improvement:P I could see myself making a habit of playing Lumosity just to improve my scores.

Does brain training actually do anything?
Now comes the sceptical, analytical side of me. Is it worth spending time playing brain training games? Will it really supercharge my brain or is it just a fun illusion of progress?

The problem of training specificity
The immediate issue I think of is training specificity. I've trained as a long distance runner for the last five years and one thing I've learnt is that cross training doesn't work that well. Doing lots of cycling will keep my heart and lungs strong but if I go for a hard run after three weeks off training, my legs will hold me back because I haven't specifically trained those muscles.

The same thing would apply to brain training. Playing Bird Watching a lot might make me really good at Bird Watching, but what does it mean in the real world? Do these practice effects translate out into the real world?

Maybe - brain training improves your IQ
Perrig and colleagues looked at the real world value of brain training. They recruited 70 volunteers and got one group to do 25 minutes of daily brain training exercises for 8-10 days. The control group did nothing. They tested the volunteers' working memory before and after the training regime using a test that was very different from the training exercises.

What they found is that it that there was a big difference between the volunteers who trained versus the volunteers who didn't train. Furthermore, the more training the volunteers did, the bigger the performance improvement was.

The conclusion: brain training might work
The research looks fairly convincing. Brain training does seem to have some effect. You could debate whether short term memory tests and IQ tests are meaningful in the real world (and that is a valid concern), but I'm going to cite the Precautionary Principle here. There is enough evidence that brain training might be worthwhile for me to give it a shot. The latest research suggests that the key question is not whether brain training works, but how to make it most effective.

How can I measure the success of brain training
A mental struggle I have right now is how to measure the success of brain training. Lumosity gives me scores that are supposedly a proxy for real world performance but that's not really good enough for me. I want to be able to track my brainpower in the real world.

Has anyone got any ideas for how to measure cognitive function in the real world?

Muscular bonding: Rowing together is more fun

2011-11-28T04:25:00.001+01:00

Not only can behavioural synchrony build rapport, it can also increase your pain threshold. Dunbar and colleagues measured pain tolerance in rowers from Oxford College. They put one of those blood pressure cuffs around the rowers' arms and gradually inflated it over the 45 minute trial. As it inflated, it would squeeze the rowers' arms until it really started to hurt. (Trust rowers to sign up for that!)

They did two trials. In one trial, the rowers rowed by themselves alone in a room. In the second trial, the team of 12 rowed together in 'boat mode'.

You can probably guess what the results were: they let the pressure band get a lot tighter when they were rowing together than when they were rowing alone. Dunbar and colleagues speculate that this was because of behavioural synchrony. The rowers were so focused on rowing in time, that they didn't notice the pain.

The study is limited because they didn't control for the effects of group motivation (e.g. those tough rowers wouldn't have wanted to wuss out in front of the rest of the team).

Muscular bonding
This experiment lends weight to William McNeill's theory of 'muscular bonding'. In his book "Keeping together in time: Dance and Drill in human history", McNeill claims that behavioural synchrony is the reason why the Nazis gained power. Marching and saluting as one caused German people to feel part of a broader movement. It wasn't because they were bad people, it was because of those dratted mirror neurons.

How you can use this knowledge
Build stronger teams
If you lead teams or run group training sessions, it seems pretty sensible to add in some 'muscular bonding' into what you're doing. Create a little ritual at the start and end of the day. Maybe you could have a secret handshake, a clapping routine or even a dance. Something energetic that everyone does in synch.

When I was facilitating the Global Changers leadership program. I liked to throw in 'Power claps', where everyone claps in unison. I thought it was just a great way to get people's attention, but now I see that it's also a way to bring a group together

Other reading:
Synchrony and cooperation: combat the 'free rider' problem by getting people to do synchronous activity before collaborating

Behavioural synchrony and rapport

2011-11-28T03:47:00.000+01:00

I found a fascinating paper published a few months ago: 'Strangers in synch: Achieving embodied rapport through behavioural synchrony'. The authors did a social experiment where they turned strangers into lifelong friends in 45 minutes through 'induced closeness' and then recorded their movements on video. The interesting thing is that when they watched the videos, the people who had gone through the 'induced closeness' procedure were moving differently to the people who just sat next to each other and did some copy-editing. They were moving in synch.

Postural mirroring
This paper reminded me of a book I listened to recently "How to make people like you in 90 seconds or less". It's based on the 'science' of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP). One thing I was quite sceptical about in the book was the idea of 'mirroring' people's body language to make them like you. The claim is that if you 'mirror' someone's movements (e.g. they put their left hand in their pocket, you put your right hand in your pocket), they will unconsciously fall into rapport with you (start liking you).

It sounded a bit bogus to me at the time. Is body language really a reflection of someone's emotional state? What about if you're cold and you cross your arms to keep warm? However, after reading this paper I'm intrigued.

Correlation or causation

Nicholas Booth, the author talks about meeting his gruff neighbour who has arms crossed. Nicholas crosses his arms and suddenly the guy asks him to come over for dinner. Amazing! But where's the hard evidence?

The big question is 'is there a causatory link between behavioural synchrony and rapport?'. I reckon there might be. I have had a few experiences like Nick too.

Causatory mechanism: mirror neurons
The orginal NLP dudes came up with the idea of mirroring based on empirical evidence decades ago. They looked at slow-mo videos of families eating dinner together and noticed how they moved in synch (e.g. drinking water one after the other). They didn't have a solid idea of why behavioural synchrony would have anything to do with rapport.

Now scientists might have figured out an explanation: mirror neurons. The classic example of mirror neurons is that study where a lab assistant ate an icecream in front of a monkey with wires in its brain and the screen LIT UP even though the monkey was sitting still. The idea is that just watching someone do something activates the same circuits as when you do it yourself.

Interestingly, mirror neurons also seem to be responsible for empathy. If you watch someone get punched in the face, you 'feel their pain'. Their face becomes part of your body.

Researchers speculate that this aspect of mirror neurons is why they relate to rapport. If you see someone with the same body posture as you, your mirror neurons trick you into thinking that they are an extension of yourself. When it comes down to it, that's what 'liking' someone means - you see them as like you, a part of yourself.

How to use this knowledge
Ok so now you know that moving in synch with someone else will help create a connection between you. So what? Let's cover two scenarios:

Scenario 1: open body language

You go up to someone and introduce yourself. They're looking very relaxed. They're smiling and they have open body language.

Great! Copy them! Relax yourself. You don't need to do much else. Watch how they stand. If they've got one hand in their pocket, do the same. Be subtle about it. If you go over the top (e.g. they stick their finger in their ear, you do the same), they'll notice!

Scenario 2: closed body language

Ooh this is where behavioural synchrony really comes into play. If you meet someone with their arms crossed and a miserable expression on their face, you're going to have a very hard time connecting with them. Closed body language equals closed communcation channels.

Your goal is to get them to open up. To do so, you can gradually lead them out of the closed body language. Start by mirroring their stance. For example, if they've got their arms crossed, cross yours too. Hold that stance for a bit and then experiment with pulling them out of it. Stretch your arms out behind your head and give them a bit of a shake around. Stay in that relaxed stance for a while and watch what happens. If you're lucky, they'll uncross their arms too. If not, you will need to go back to crossing your arms and try other methods of rapport.

Overcoming conversational narcissism

2011-11-28T02:52:00.000+01:00

A lot of people I meet are conversational narcissists. They loove talking about themselves and will do anything and everything to make a conversation about them. This is expressed in a couple of ways:

Competition
Narcissists see conversations as an opportunity to flex their ego. If someone mentions an achievement
"I'm really proud of myself, I just got a promotion",
the narcissist will attempt to one-up them
"Oh yeah? That's great. I just got a promotion too! Doubled my pay rise!".

This becomes comical when it's not an achievement but a failure, e.g.
A: "I just crashed my car"
B: "Oh yeah? Well I just totalled mine last week! I was lucky to walk out alive!"

Deflection
Narcissists get bored of talking about anything they're not involved in. Rather than seeking to learn more about a topic, they'll deflect it away "Speaking of roaming broadband, I just got back from a trip to Rome last night". It doesn't even have to be a verbal deflection. Simply withholding phatic communication will starve a conversation to death.

How to overcome conversational narcissism
One of my core beliefs is that "you can't change other people, you can only change yourself". I've been guilty of conversational narcissism on a few occasions, so I now do my best to short circuit that with the 30 second rule.

The 30 second rule
The idea behind the 30 second rule is that you should avoid talking for more than 30 seconds without involving the other person in some way. It might just be asking them a closed question "has that ever happened to you?" or you might open it up completely "what are your thoughts on that".

Capitalising on conversational narcissism
Now that you know how not to be a conversational narcissist, you're probably wondering what to do when someone else is being one. Rather than getting annoyed when someone only wants to talk about themselves, I take advantage of it. It's a great opportunity to learn a LOT about someone else in a very short space of time.

Most of the time that's very useful. It's free information. I would go so far as to say it's one of my main goals in conversations. It's an opportunity for me to learn how I can help them and how they might be able to help me.

Forget the 80:20 rule in conversations

2011-11-28T02:45:00.000+01:00

One thing you’ll see a lot in of networking books are rules of thumb like the ’80:20’ rule. The idea of the ’80:20’ rule is that you speak 20% of the time and they speak 80% of the time.

I do like this rule to an extent because it helps people overcome the spectre of conversational narcissism. By encouraging people to spend more time listening and less time talking, better conversations result.

However, I think the 80:20 rule is overly simplistic. It implies that you will take a passive role in the conversation and be the ‘listener’. The problem this creates is the other person will forget who you are. They might remember you as being a ‘really good listener’, but so what? You don’t want them to remember them for that. You want them to remember you as the owner of an exciting business they want to deal with, or an amazing consultant they want to hire. You need to leave an impression. This means you need to talk. Not all the time. But at certain points in the conversation, you most certainly do.

I suggest an alternative: the triumph model of networking conversations.

The triumph model of networking conversationsThe triumph model shows you how to spread the 80:20 rule across a conversation. At some times you need to be the one doing most of the talking. At other times, you need to do the listening. The process looks like this.

Make 'em comfy

If someone is scared of you or scared of the situation, there is no way they will share anything meaningful with you. They’ll clam up. They’ll talk about superficial things like TV and football and won’t go any further. Given that only deep conversations will allow you to achieve your objectives, you need to do something to make them feel comfortable.

A few things work well here:

Mutual self disclosure
Humour
Behavioural synchrony

Listen to em

What are your goals for this conversation? If you're smart, one of them will be to find out as much about the other person as possible so that you can see how you could help them and they could help you.

To do this, you need to shut up. Resist the urge to interrupt and share a story "Oh wow! My friend just went to Ayres rock too!". Maintain friendly facial contact. Use appropriate phatic communication so they keep on talking.

Make em an offer

After you've found out lots about them, you know enough to offer them something. It might be catching up for a coffee to discuss a business deal. It might be connecting them up with a friend who might be able to help them. Keep it short and sharp. You want to close this conversation up so you can go and meet other people.

Superspecialists and superconnectors

2011-11-27T14:53:00.000+01:00

Superspecialisation
Screw liberal arts degrees, the new trend is super-specialisation. It's not enough to specialise in orthopaedic surgery any more, now you need to superspecialise in treating developmental dysplasia of the hip. An MBA is old school, to stand out, you need an MHROD (Masters in Human Resources and Organisational Development).

While I can see the benefits of superspecialisation (I'd much rather have my developmental dysplasia fixed by a doctor who's done hundreds of them), it presents a major problem: knowledge silos. In large corporations, departments become so focused on their own work that they shut everyone else out. Knowledge transfer is limited because each department has its own jargon and its own office space.

Societal enclaves
It's not just large corporations either. I see enclaves forming everywhere in society. Badminton players like to hang out with other badminton players, vegans like to eat dinner with other vegans, Chinese people like to spend time with other Chinese people. Linked by shared interests, they clump together in small groups.

A missed opportunity
Clumps are exclusive. They probably don't intend it that way but by forming such a tight knit group, you can't help but to keep other people out. After all, if you have to wear dreadlocks and eat mungbeans, why would you want to join those crazy vegans? It sounds almost as much work as doing an MHROD!

So what happens is the clumps remain separate. Even though the badminton players would probably love vegan food, they never try it because they are put off by the tall walls of the vegan faux-ivory tower.

The role of superconnectors
What if these clumps could be connected up? Not smoodged together into a blob, but linked by a thread of human energy. This is what a super connector does. A super connector is someone who belongs to multiple clumps. Take Tony for example. Tony is a vegan Badminton player with Chinese ancestry. He loves to connect up his friends from different clumps. Last Sunday, he took his vegan friends to the badminton court and they had an amicable chat with a staunch omnivore over the badminton net. Suddenly connection was sparked. The vegans stopped seeing badminton as some boring sport and the badminton players stopped seeing vegans as dirty hippies with poor hand-eye coordination.

Why be a superconnector?

Here are six of the key benefits to becoming a super-connector:

Get insider knowledge
Get high quality recommendations
Get access to people and opportunities that would otherwise be off limits to you
Increase your happiness
Find mentors
Make the world a better place

Get insider knowledge

In Australia, we have laws against ‘insider trading’. There’s a good reason for that. If you’re privy to restricted information about a publicly listed company, for example, you might catch wind of a plan to acquire one of their competitors, you can make better decisions that will put you ahead of all the other investors out there.

Now hang on, I’m not advocating insider trading! But can you see how having insider knowledge can give you a major advantage over people who aren’t in the know? There is a lot of important information that isn’t publicly available. It’s not necessarily that it’s hidden from the public, it’s more that people don’t usually talk to anyone they’re not friends with. It might also be that the information is public but it’s drowned out by all the other information that’s out there. You need people to help you tune out the noise so that you can hear the signal. You need people who can tell you what’s important and what’s not. And you need lots of people telling you these things so that you’re hearing a story from different angles.

Get high quality recommendations

Do you need a plumber? A math tutor? A real estate agent? A great restaurant? We’ve probably all experienced a time when a friend has recommended a product or service and it’s turned out great. The fact is that you can’t trust advertising. A tradesperson may claim that his work is high quality, but we won’t believe him unless someone else backs that up and someone else that we trust.

If you become a superconnector, you gain access to more people who can give you high quality recommendations. What that means is that if you need something, for example, let’s say you need your roof re-tiled, you don’t have to waste time and money experimenting with a bunch of roof tilers, you can just ask your friends who they’d recommend.

Get access to people and opportunities that would otherwise be off limits to you

CEOs have closed doors and closed phone lines. If you want to talk to Bill Gates, you won’t find his number in the phone book. He doesn’t want to be available to just anyone. He is only interested in talking to people who are inside his filter bubble, people who have been filtered by his gatekeepers – that is his secretary, his security guards, his chief of staff and probably even his guard dog.

That means if you do want to talk to Bill Gates, you need to know someone who can introduce you. The only way a mere mortal is going to get past those gatekeepers and get inside that filter bubble is to be friends with someone who’s friends with Bill Gate’s secretary’s wife’s daughter...and then use that connection. The more connections you have, the closer you are to people who can help you. It’s been said that the average person is only six steps removed from everyone in the world. If you’re a super connector, you can cut this down to three steps removed.

If you want to land a job, make a sale or buy an exclusive property, the solution is to expand your network to include people who can connect you with the employer, buyer or property owner. Super connectors have access to far more opportunities than the average person.

Increase your happiness

There is an enormous amount of scientific evidence to show that the more connections you have with other people, the happier you will become. It makes sense. As a species, we are safer when we’re in a pack. A lone human is vulnerable. A wolf could come along and rip his throat out. But when that same human is in a tribe, they’re far safer. They can appoint someone to act as a guard, to cry wolf (hopefully not someone called Peter!). There is safety in numbers. Evolution has shaped the human species to seek out other humans to form a tribe.

Although we generally don’t have to worry about wolves anymore, that evolutionary instinct to find other people and make friends with them, is still a deeply ingrained part of our psyche. Every time you make a new connection, your brain rewards you by sending a rush of endorphins through your system. Don’t fight it, become a super connector and fight off wolves.

Find mentors

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with

Have you ever noticed how you take on the mannerisms and the ways of speaking of the people that you spend time with? There was a time when this became very apparent to me. I was working as a data entry professional, quite a boring job I must admit. I didn’t mind it because it gave me time to listen to my university lectures while I was working. However some of my colleagues hated their job. I enjoyed talking with them though they were very interesting guys. I would go out for smoking breaks with them. I didn’t smoke but I would sit and talk with them while they complained about what they hated about the job. And at the beginning I would argue with them when they brought up something negative about the job. I would focus on the positives. However after a while of spending time with these two guys, I found myself becoming more and more negative. I started to take on their attitudes towards work. Before I knew it I was saying things like I hate that manager.

There came a point where I realised what was happening and I stopped spending so much time with these guys. That was a big realisation for me that by osmosis I was taking on the attitudes of my coworkers have. But it also gave me an idea. If I was if I took on the a negative attitudes of these negative people then maybe I could take on positive attitudes from positive people.

I started looking for people who aspired to the same goals that I had, who had the same values that I had, and who were doing more than I was doing. What I found is that I started to take on these attitudes more strongly than I had previously. I strengthens my belief in my goals and ambitions and I started to work harder because these people were working harder to.

This observation is not reserved to me. There is a lot of research into the way that some emotions and attitudes can be contagious. Have you ever heard of the 'fat friends effect'? Wealth is also similar inpeople’s peer groups. This seems to happen naturally that people with similar attitudes and values will gravitate towards each other.

You can use this phenomenon to alter the way that you behave. If there is a goal that you would like to achieve, based on this recommendation it makes sense for you to spend more time with other people who are achieving this same goal.

I really like what Arnold schwarzenegger has to say on this topic. Arnie says that he goes out of his way to constantly find new mentors new people who will stretch him people who are just a bit further along the path to the goal that he ultimately wants to achieve. This is very sound advice. What it cuts out is the disconnect between the over ambitious goals that some people set themselves. A lot of people like to set big hairy audacious goals. The research suggests that setting these kind of goals is a recipe for failure because they’re just too far away. There needs to be some kind of link between where you are now and where you want to go. I’m not saying you can’t set big hairy audacious goals but what you need to be aware of is that if you only set big hairy audacious goals you’re probably not going to get their there needs to be some kind of intermediate step to allow you to achieve bite sized chunks. That’s really what works went instead of only having goals that are too far away you also have intermediate goals that’s what works.

The same thing applies in networking if you make the goal to go out and meet Richard Branson it’s not going to happen it’s too far away I think a dose of realism in goal setting is very important. I’m not saying don’t play big. I am saying look at where you are now and focus on moving forward. What I find is that people who set humongous goals are paralysed. It just feels too hard. You can set that huge goal but put it far into the future. Work back from their. Set some intermediate goals that will allow you to reach that tremendous vision.

Likewise when you are deciding who you want to network with look at the people around you who are doing slightly better than you are. Model them make them your role models. Spend as much time as you can with these people. If you do that then you’ll gradually pull yourself up to the standard that they have reached. At that point you then have a decision to make. Do you want to be normal or do you want to be exceptional?

It’s easy to be comfortable. It’s easy to just do the minimum. It’s easy to say I’ve already done the hard work that’s enough for me. But if you want to really succeeded in life, you need to change your attitude to one where you were constantly looking for more growth opportunities. What I argue is that the way to ensure growth is to look at how you can spend more time with people who are ahead of you and to be constantly looking for people who are doing better than you and to start working with them.

Make the world a better place

The benefits of being super connector extend beyond yourself. If you know more than 1000 people, you are in a unique position to cross pollinate ideas. You might have a conversation one day with a permaculturalist friend who wants to start a garden but has no space because they live in a one bedroom apartment. The next day, you might have a chat with a friend who is always away and has a backyard that’s overwhelmed with weeds. Suddenly the connection emerges clear as a turquoise sea: your permaculturalist friend can offer to set up a garden in your travelling friend’s backyard. It’s a classic win-win scenario that the two would never have realised if you hadn’t been there to make the connection.

There are so many possible causes you can help if you’re a super connector. Recently a friend of mine asked for some help. She’s working on a project to cut the cost of constructing a house by 60% and she needed contacts in the construction industry. I loved the idea. I couldn’t help her myself but I do know quite a few architects and even a few people with construction supply businesses. I introduced her to them and new connections were formed, which will hopefully lead to cheaper houses for new home owners.

Four things I really like about Huddle Design

2011-10-03T05:17:00.000+02:00

I've been hanging out at Huddle Design, "Australia's most loved service agency", for the last month doing some voluntary work experience. So far I've logged about 90 hours working on some of their projects.

Why the hell did I agree to voluntary work experience?

Two key reasons:

1. I really like Mel Senova, the managing director of Huddle. I met Mel at the Innovate Symposium and connected with her straight away. She's a really fun person to be around. We were talking about quite serious things (e.g. how do you convince people to stop using so much electricity?) but unlike most conversations around these topics, the tone wasn't "those stupid people, why can't they just stop being so wasteful!?", it was "how can we influence their behaviour by making it fun!?". I really liked that positive slant and that emphasis on doing good without being evangelical.

2. I wanted to learn service design. While talking with Mel at Innovate, I felt a huge knowledge gap. I went out to dinner with Mel and Will Donovan and I have to admit, half the time I didn't have a clue what they were talking about. "Service design", "touchpoints", "customer journey maps", what the hell were they talking about? I didn't get how they did it, but the results they talked about (e.g. a project Will's driving, Kin, which is around connecting up elder people and younger people for two-way knowledge transfer) sounded really cool. I wanted to learn the "How".

What's it been like?

Amazing. To give you a snapshot, the four things I've really liked about huddle so far have been:

1. Huddle is fun

2. Huddle is innovative

3. Huddle is bold

4. Huddle does good.

Fun

Huddle is fun. On one of my first days in the new office, there was a trolley lying on the ground. We'd been working for a while and Damian announced "It's time for a break! Let's go for a chariot ride". He eyed up who was going to be the least likely to break the trolley and decided that I was going to be the lucky one to go for a chariot ride on the trolley! We followed it up with a paper plane contest. I was a bit resistant to the idea of having fun interludes in the work day at first. I've been brought up with a philosophy that 'hard work will yield rewards' and 'breaks are for the weak'. But I noticed how my productivity was actually higher when I had an energetic, fun break to ramp up my energy levels. Laughter is a helluva lot healthier than coffee!

It's not just in the breaks either. Working with Damo and Patti was an overall fun experience. Every quasi-meeting we had was interspersed with laughter. It was serious work but by approaching it lightheartedly I think we got more done. This was especially the case during crunch time with 2 days to go on the project. We were working on building a database (details are secret:P) and we realised there were some major data integrity issues. That meant we were going to have to audit the whole database (1000 rows argghh!). Auditing! Pretty much the least fun job in the world right?

But we made it fun. We divvied up the work into bite sized chunks and created a 'gamified spreadsheet' with a chart that showed how much work there was to go. Ticking off the box after every chunk and watching the blue wedge shrink made the task feel a lot more achievable especially when I'd check back on the chart and see that someone else had finished a chunk. We did it together and that made it easier.

Innovative

Huddle is innovative. I've worked in a very conservative environment (won't name the company) in the past, where my innovation (a wiki to replace a centralised, SLOW knowledge management system) was actively stifled because it might interfere with ISO 90001. Management didn't seem interested in process improvement from staff. I love new ideas. My experience from Huddle so far is that they LOVE new ideas too:) Coming onto this new project, I made a couple of fairly radical suggestions (details secret). At most companies, these suggestions would go through a formal process, get handballed from person and sit on a manager's desk for weeks or months. At Huddle, we implemented the new ideas the same day. We had a quick chat about the potential risks and then said "let's do a prototype". We gave it a go.

Courage

I think it's safe to say that in most companies, the mission statement is regarded as a wanky waste of paper (for a comical take on it, try the mission statement generator). At Huddle it is real. I have seen the values in the mission embodied by Huddlers constantly during my month here. One powerful example is around Huddle's vow to be Courageous and Honest. I saw this embodied when one of the project teams did "Black ops" customer research that the client (details secret) didn't want them to do. Huddle knew that customer research was necessary to create a meaningful outcome for the client, so they did it, even though the client didn't want them to.

Doing good

Huddle makes its money largely from corporate clients (a few non profits in the mix too). I'm cool with that, you've got to make money somehow and we're talking ethical companies not uranium miners or cluster bomb manufacturers. But what I really like is Huddle does a lot of pro-bono work with organisations that couldn't afford to pay for Huddle's services. They've worked with Les Twentyman, they're working with Streat and even with Shift360 an organisation that looks after former slaves in south east Asia.

One of my chief challenges has been how can I balance doing good (through volunteering) with making enough cash to keep myself going. I really like Huddle's model. The corporate clients give them enough of a foundation to do meaningful pro-bono work. It's working for them - they've doubled in size in the last 6 months!

I've really enjoyed my one month, have learnt a lot and hope to do more with Huddle going forward:)

Free Money Day

2011-09-15T10:54:00.000+02:00

Free Money Day

On 15th September at 1.15PM, a group of four of us gave out around $350 in coins and notes to passerbys on one of the busiest streets in Melbourne (Bourke St). Most people avoided us ("what's the catch?", "I don't need any money"). A few stopped and accepted the Free Money Day challenge: take one coin for yourself and give one to someone else.

Why the hell did I give away my own money?

Free Money Day is a stunt. Normally Melbournians get asked for money all the time. Homeless people, buskers and street vendors are all thronging for your cash. After a while, people start to tune out the voices asking for spare change.

I wanted to see what would happen if I turned the tables and offered people money. Would people stop? And more importantly would they stop and have a conversation?

What kind of conversations did I want to have?

I wanted to talk about the concept of "enough". Our society is geared around growth. We must always have more. We must work harder to acquire bigger TVs, faster cars, larger wardrobes. If we only get that next pay rise, then we will be happy...for a few months. And then our neighbours get an even bigger TV and we have to compete. So we work harder and harder to pay for it, only to find we have no time to enjoy the things that really matter.

What is the alternative?

Work out what you need

What really matters to you? The obvious things come up first: food, shelter, transport, clothes, electricity. What else matters? I'm not going to be prescriptive, but for most people it's relationships.

Work out how you can get it by sharing instead of owning

It's usually a lot cheaper to share something than to own it. Let's take a drill for example. I'd guess that 60% of households own an electric drill. But how often do those drills get used? A few times a year? And the rest of the time they're sitting idle.

This example is why collaborative consumption is a growing movement. It amazed me to learn that 44% of economic activity is unpaid. For decades, businesses have focused on making it really easy to buy stuff. Now services like The Sharehood make it really easy to share stuff.

Do meaningful work

What would it be like if you didn't have to own stuff? Your living expenses would be a lot lower. And that would mean you could focus on doing meaningful work that perhaps pays a bit less instead of working a job you don't really enjoy just for the sake of earning a bit more.

What do you think?

How much of what we need can we get without paying for it? Is a steady state economy possible? Or is this all just a pipe dream? Did I waste my $56?

Was my degree worth $40,705?

2011-07-09T17:32:00.002+02:00

I have spent the last 4.5 years of my life at Monash University, studying Environmental Science. I now have a student loan debt of $40,705.

And you know what? I'm not going to be an Environmental Scientist. Like many uni graduates (stats anyone?), I don't intend on using my degree for my future career. Some people would look at my story and think "he just wasted 4.5 years of his life and cost the government $40,705 for nothing".

Let's look at the argument both ways. Topic for the debate "Was Jeremy's degree a waste of time and money?"

Negative: It was worthwhile
I certainly got something from my 4.5 years.

Strong analytical skills. I can now read an academic paper, pick apart the evidence and decide whether its claims are accurate.
Critical thinking. By the end of my degree, I was an autonomous researcher, choosing questions I was interested in exploring and designing experiments to answer those questions.
Effective and succinct writing. I culled my honours thesis down from 20,000 words to 14,000 words.
Teamwork. I did a number of group projects where I had to work with other people.
Public speaking. I gave numerous talks throughout my studies, culminating in a 20 minute talk on my honours project.
Subject matter expertise. I learnt all about geology, biology, ecology, biotechnology, environmental policy, physics and biochemistry.

Maybe those skills and attributes now make me worth $40,705 to Australia.

Affirmative: it was a waste of time and money
I did benefit from my degree. All of those skills are worthwhile. But I feel that getting a degree was a horrendously inefficient way to gain those skills. My degree focused on pumping me full of knowledge rather than turning me into someone who could meaningfully contribute to society. The skills I gained were mostly superficial and were largely a side effect of the learning process rather than the main objective of my degree.

I contend that I could have gained all of those skills in 1 year of focused attention. Instead of sitting in a lecture theatre with 100 people, getting talked at rather than learning, I could have learnt through experience and targeted feedback. I could have worked in a job that challenged me with real life, engaging scenarios instead of dull, worn examples from 20 years ago. I could have contributed meaningfully to society during my learning process instead of being a $40,705 drain on society.

What are the alternatives?
At my school (Melbourne High School), uni was the only acceptable pathway. There was enormous pressure to get a high year 12 mark so you could get into law or medicine or some such prestigious degree. I didn't see any other path.

Now, 4.5 years later, I see many paths I could have taken:
- straight into the workforce: After 4.5 years in a full time job, I am quite confident that I would have reached a management level position. I would have learnt a heap, applied it to real scenarios and earned quite a bit of money.
- apprenticeship: I could have done an apprenticeship in a trade. After 4.5 years, I could have become an accomplished bicycle mechanic.
- volunteer: I could have spent my time volunteering. I would have gained all of the skills from university and made a positive societal impact.
- entrepreneur: I could have started my own business straight out of school. In 4.5 years, I would have gone through a lot of failure but am confident that I would have ended up with a thriving company.

What do these alternate paths require?
Courage and real time learning.

Courage
It would have taken a brave person to choose any of those alternate paths in my year at Melbourne High. A grand total of 2 people did an apprenticeship. 90% of the rest went straight into uni. I was not a brave person in year 12. My schooling taught me to be safe, not to take risks.

Real time learning
My university education was based on the idea that I had to spend 3-4 years learning something before I was capable of doing it in the workplace. The result of that education style is that I have forgotten everything I learnt at the start of the degree. Why? It's not useful to me anymore. That is a waste of time.

A far better model would be for me to learn something when I need it for a task. Modular skills workshops instead of protracted uni courses.

Apprenticeships for every profession
I believe academic education is wasted for the majority of people who don't want to become researchers. A better way would be to get people started in a job straight away. They would find out immediately whether they liked it and they'd learn skills they could use right away.

Why can't we have apprenticeships for every profession instead of just for tradespeople?

Cocreating Dinner part 1

2011-07-02T01:12:00.000+02:00

Cocreating Dinner
Last night a dinner party was co-created. I invited six of the most interesting people in my life to join me for dinner. Not only would they join me for dinner, but they would also help construct the dinner by bringing part of the dinner along with them. None of them knew each other beforehand, so they were venturing into the unknown.

The food
I set my guests a challenge: make something I can eat (vegan and gluten free). The result was delicious. We had a three course meal with barely any effort.
Entree
Sam brought hummus and soda water for pre-dinner drinks/snacks.
Main
I made Ethiopian Wat, which made for humorous conversation "What are we having?" "Wat" "What?" "Wat".
Side dish
Lucy brought a colourful, crunchy salad with lima beans, corn, capsicum, bean sprouts and snow peas.
Dessert
Helen made a fruit salad with yoghurt and chocolate dressing all wrapped up in a meringue shell.

The evening
The conversation made the night. My guests started off as strangers to each other, but by the end of the evening, everyone was talking like old friends. Helen helped make this happen by asking everyone the question "What are you passionate about?" (a far better question than "What do you do for a living?").
Hearing the answers to these questions helped create an instant connection. A highlight was Brian's story of travelling to Colombia and being so confronted by the plight of the street kids there that he has made it his mission to raise funds for a local charity that gives the kids a home and a future. I was also fascinated by Aren's passion for brewing quality beer in his garage. (Can't wait to try the first gluten free batch).

Over dinner, Helen treated us to an engaging description of the human side of change management. She spoke about the disconnect between IT managers and business managers: "The IT guys treat it as a competition to rush out the latest version of the software as quickly as possible without thinking about how it's going to impact people". I went away with mountains of ideas about how to train people (create a playful atmosphere by leaving stuffed toys lying around) and how to campaign for change (find a project sponsor who really cares about a quality experience for users).

It was like eating dinner with a speaker from TED (Helen is a change management consultant and would deliver a terrific TED talk). Helen barely got a chance to eat because we were constantly firing questions at her!

The verdict
To close the evening, I asked everyone "What made tonight really cool?" (I love leading questions:P). The answer from everyone was "yes it was really cool" and "the people". My aim was to connect up the most interesting people in my life and that definitely happened.

The experience of creating dinner together was also a big success. We had a shared goal and that united us as much as the conversations did.

An unexpected piece of feedback was that it doesn't have to be food. My guests felt that any shared experience would have the same effect.

Cocreating experiences: the future
The next step is to help the idea replicate itself. I left my guests with an invitation to run their own Cocreation Dinners/Experiences and to shape it as they see fit. I'm looking forward to:
- learning to iceskate backwards with Sam
- brewing beer with Aren
- going diving with Lucy
- learning to design and sew an outfit with Alice
- making origami with Helen
- having dinner with Brian

The how-to guide
Stay tuned for a how-to guide on hosting and attending Cocreation Experience nights.

I can't live on $2 per day. And this is why you should donate.

2011-05-16T16:59:00.001+02:00

I want to make one thing clear about my Live Strong Below the Line challenge. I am not saying living below the poverty line is easy.

My experiment (living on $2 per day of food) is rigged

I am really living on at least $5 per day.

Let's think about what I'm not counting:

- electricity (5 KwH = ~$1)
- water (~$1)
- internet ($0.50)
- sanitation (toothpaste, soap $0.50)

And that's not counting infrastructure. The paved road I ride my bike down. The house I live in rent free. So many other things I can't even think of.

I repeat. This experiment is rigged.

And for good reason. I couldn't live on $2 per day. There is no way I could do it. And I don't want to try.

What I am saying: it doesn't take much more than $2
$2 per day is a miserable existence. But based on my experiences so far, I think I could live quite comfortably on $5 per day.

The reason I'm asking you to donate to Live Below the Line is because it only takes a little bit to make a big difference. Poverty seems massive and immense when you think about 1.4 billion people living on this little. But it seems pretty small and winnable when you think all it takes is to help someone go from living on $2 per day to $5 per day.

Think about how you live right now. Could you give up something to help end extreme poverty? How much of your income do you donate to charity?

Personally my figure is 10%. Doesn't matter how little or how big my pay cheque is, that 10% gets sent away.

This week will you donate 10% of what you earned to Live Below the Line?

How to build muscle with only $2 per day of food

2011-05-16T15:17:00.001+02:00

Watch this video to learn how I increased my max leg press from 120kg to 140kg in two weeks, while only eating $2/day of food.

For the last two weeks I have been living on $2/day as part of the Live Below The Line Challenge. I have experienced what it's like to live in poverty like 1.4 billion people around the world. I suffered miserably for the first 4 days as I battled through caffeine withdrawal. Now, I am experiencing the lack of dietary variety poverty brings, eating mung beans and chickpeas for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Support me in this epic challenge by logging on to www.livebelowtheline.org.au/LiveStrongBelowTheLine and donating to support international aid and development projects.

I'm 8% of the way to my fundraising target of $2000.

Staying Strong Below the Line - Week 1

2011-05-08T15:55:00.000+02:00

It's been a week since I started Staying Strong Below the Line and it's time for a progress report. I bet you're dying to know how hard it has been to live on $2 per day.

Caffeine withdrawal
Well I won't lie to you, it has been hard. By far the hardest part has been giving up coffee! My energy levels fell through the floor for the first few days and I struggled to stay mentally alert at a time when I really need to be switched on (I'm writing my honours thesis).

Interestingly though, now I feel really good. The headaches, which had been plaguing me for the last few months have disappeared. I feel peaceful and meditative rather than so supercharged that I steamroll over everyone around me. I like this.

Calorie deficit
On Thursday I cycled 60k to get to a speaking gig. That night I found myself snapping at a dear friend of mine (sorry Lucy!) for no good reason. The next morning I had to drag myself out of bed, feeling like death. Things made sense when I felt much better after eating my planned breakfast and lunch in one go.

How was I going to survive on $2 per day if I was burning that many calories? After five days I'd already lost 1kg.

Mung beans to the rescue
Something had to change. I needed more calories for my coin. So on Saturday, I headed down to Amba Bazaar in Syndal and the friendly shop owner, Dhinesh, gave me a discount on a 5kg bag of mung beans! Hoorah, now I had enough to eat.

(I also realised that a big part of the problem was I messed up the mental arithmetic and was living on $1.50 per day instead of $2 per day!)

What am I eating this week?
Here's how I'm spending my $14 this week:
- 2kg of white rice ($3.60 from IGA)
- 4kg of mung beans ($9.30 from Amba Bazaar)
- 14 Cenovis multivitamin tablets ($1.26)

How's the nutrition?
Have a look here. To summarise: good. I'm getting 2600 calories per day, 134g of complete protein and all of my vitamins and minerals.

Staying Strong Below the Line

2011-05-08T14:58:00.000+02:00

This May I am "Staying Strong Below the Line" as part of the Oaktree Foundation's Live Below the Line campaign. For a month I am living on $2 per day, while continuing my intense workout schedule.

What's all this in aid of?

I am doing this to change a perception around poverty. We often see people in poverty as victims, people to be pitied. The stereotypical image in the media is of a starving child with his ribs poking out after a natural disaster. Again and again we are asked to give money to help save these poor people, and in Australia at least, we often do.

What this image leaves out is the people living in tremendous adversity every day, who are surviving without help or assistance. They do not complain, they do not despair, they just work incredibly hard to make ends meet. I am talking about the mother working 12 hour days in a sweat shop so she can send her kids to school. I am talking about the man working long days ploughing the field by hand, so he can grow enough food to feed his family.

These people don't need our pity, they deserve our respect. They have the drive, they have the work ethic, they have the innovative mind. All they need is an opportunity and a leg up.

So this May I am "Living Strong Below the Line" to get a taste of what it is like to live on $2 per day like 1.4 billion people around the world.

The money I raise through this endeavour will go towards helping young people in Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Cambodia lift themselves out of poverty.

Will you support me in this challenge?

Are you strong enough to live on $2 per day for a paltry 5 days? If not, will you support me with a cash donation to the Oaktree foundation?

Take action today!

Be a leader not a linchpin

2011-02-23T04:26:00.000+01:00

In Seth Godin's popular book, "Linchpin: are you indispensable?", he calls for a new kind of worker, a linchpin, someone who breaks out of the mould and injects passion and creativity into what they do. People should do what they love and look forward going to work rather than dragging themselves through the door every morning and sprinting out at the end of the day. I could not agree more. For a happy and productive society, this is exactly what we need.

However, I am not so fond of another of the contentions of the book: that people should make themselves indispensable. Godin argues that to stand out in the marketplace, people need to position themselves as unique. If no-one else can offer what you have, the market will reward you handsomely. On the surface, this makes sense. Uniqueness equals scarcity and scarcity fuels demand.

Linchpins don't partner
A danger here is that uniqueness makes partnership difficult. If you are focused on being unique, then you might avoid asking other people for help for fear that they will claim some of the available rewards. You might have a business idea that no-one else has thought of. The temptation could be to build the business by yourself, so that you alone will reap the profits.

A lot of internet marketing trainers promote this approach. Position yourself as an expert and convince people that you alone can tell them the answers and they'll elbow their friends in the eye in their mad rush to buy your products. Some people are earning a lot of money this way, particularly the ones selling ebooks titled "How to earn a six figure income selling ebooks online to people who want to learn how to earn a six figure income selling ebooks online".

Look, maybe it works, maybe you'll make money, but I think it's the wrong mindset. I'm not interested in this style of marketing at all because it encourages selfishness and isolation. People don't want to help each other because they're worried they'll lose customers to the other person. It really is a zero-sum game mentality, where you can only get ahead by screwing someone else over.

In the process, internet marketing linchpins are losing a great opportunity to do something incredible. By partnering with other talented ebook writers, they could create a product that would provide massive value to people and generate a far bigger profit pool than they could ever achieve alone.

Linchpins don't succeed
Another danger of linchpinism is when people do make themselves _indispensable_. If you're working for a large company and you set up a new project that only you understand, then management will be so desperate to hang on to you that they'll throw wads of cash at you. There's a good reason for this. If you're the only one who can do what you do, then your project dies with you. What happens if you get knocked down by an out of control vespa? No-one else can run the project. It will be abandoned. Succession planning is centred on this very problem. Linchpins don't succeed because no-one else can do what they do.

If you're only out to make money, then start up as many unique projects as you can. Talk loudly in the office about your plans to go skydiving on the weekend and watch your manager gulp. The next payrise is just around the corner. Keep your team in the dark so no-one can steal your job. Run so fast they can't keep up.

Be a leader
On the other hand, if you want to add massive value to people's lives and create something really special, then make yourself _dispensable_. Put the project above yourself and build something incredible with other people. Be a leader by developing leaders, who can do what you do. Create systems so that anyone can manage the project and roll it out to other locations.

You will succeed through succession - passing on the leadership to someone else and moving on to bigger and better things. Trust in your creativity, your skills and your ability to keep coming up with more ideas. Instead of clawing out a bigger chunk of the pie, make the pie bigger, so that everyone can have more.

The universe is abundant. The only limits to growth are in your mind. Let go of your old beliefs and fears and let other people in. We can all win together.

The Last Tiger

2011-02-23T04:21:00.000+01:00

Dear Tiger Airways,
I am writing to inform you that you have lost me as a customer. I have flown with you four times and every time my flight has been delayed by several hours. You offered no consolation for the inconvenience you caused me (twice I had to pay for a taxi because I arrived after the last train in Melbourne). It is clear to me that you are more interested in making money than providing a good service.

What cheek to charge $25 for desk check in! I understand that you are attempting to increase efficiency, but $25 for an extra two minutes of your staff's time is utterly disproportionate! You obviously treat them much better than you treat your customers if you value their time at $750/hour (30 x $25).

You need to take a long hard look at your business practices. If you can't get it right, then get out of the marketplace. I will be boycotting your services and encouraging my friends and family to do the same.

yours in frustration,
Jeremy Nagel

Find your power pose

2011-02-15T22:50:00.000+01:00

As a teenager, I played a lot of video games. I'd spend hours every evening in a darkened room, transfixed by the computer screen, oblivious to everything and everyone around me. As well as being a killer for my social life, this habit also caused me to develop a terrible posture. I'd slump forward, neck craned towards the screen, my back drooped like a wilting branch.

I stopped playing games when I was 18, but the terrible posture stayed with me. I knew I should sit up straight and stand up tall, but my muscles were so well trained (or so poorly trained) that I soon gave up whenever I tried to change my posture. It just felt so hard and I didn't see any real benefit. Sure I might avoid wrecking my back when I'm older, but right now, why should I care?

Recently I cracked it. I've found a reason to correct my posture: power. I was at a public speaking training day on the weekend, and the coach pounced on me. "You're letting all your energy, all your power drain out of you! Stand up tall and say it again." I stood up tall and I said it again and the difference was incredible. I felt strong, powerful, confident. The same words had twice the impact. It felt like I was sending out a wave of energy to the audience, and they responded.

I noticed another thing. This training day went from 8am to 10pm: 14 hours. It was full on. A lot of action, a lot of participation. Normally I'd be so tired, I wouldn't be able to absorb anything after 8 hours. But I discovered that all I had to do to remain completely focused and present was to sit up straight.

It all makes sense now. Having poor posture is a vicious cycle. When I slump forward, I let the energy seep out of me and that causes me to slump even further. The only way to break out is to get into my power pose.

Have you found your power pose? Do you stand up tall and let the world see your brilliance?