1. Make a neutral observation – just say what you have observed, what the data shows or whatever.  

Then….

2. Ask  neutral open question.

It’s so simple that it works!  The links above will give you a bit more background information on both stages.

Here’s an example:

1.  Observation: ‘I’ve noticed our meetings usually go well over time.’

2.  Open question: ‘What do you think we could do about that?’

Simple, isn’t it?  Try it and let me know how you get on.

I often think we are like flies caught in mindsets that are self-inflicted Venus Fly Traps.   Knowing that you have a self-limiting belief and being able to do something about it are two different things. Often clients are very well aware of their particular negative mindset, but it entices them in with whispers of safety and suddenly, they are stuck.  People might compliment them on looking attractive - whilst their mindset says: ‘No you’re not!’; colleagues might see them as being very organised, but of course they know they are not.  So our mindsets hold us stuck.  We lie there, seemingly alive but inwardly writhing until the life-blood gets drained out of us…..arrgh!

Carol Dweck has produced some very interesting research about the importance of a ‘growth’ mindset is to our success.  It’s great to believe in your talents and attributes, but Dweck’s work shows that far more important is your belief that you can grow and learn.  This means that once you become aware of a negative mindset, you can overcome it if you believe that you can gradually change it. Dweck is talking here about mindsets related to intelligence, but you can see how it could relate to  any mindset. With a growth mindset, we are more likely to keep trying, to learn more about the skill, to seek feedback, learn from failure and eventually get free of our own  Fly Trap.

So through practice and constructive reflection, you can learn how to value the attractive parts of your appearance, or the semblance of organisation that you create.  Maybe whilst your choice of clothes might not get you on the front cover of Vogue, it could be good enough for people to be interested in you.  Probably, whilst you might not win a time and motion study award, your organisational ability might be good enough to get the job done well!

This isn’t about immediately turning that mindset completely around.  It is about believing that eventually we can alter it, working out how to do it, learning from when we fail. If you have a negative mindset, say about being disorganised, you could learn more about where you get that mindset from, work out when you actually feel organised, what you could do to help feel more organised more of the time.. and so on. There are enough flytraps around without creating our own.  Or have is that just a negative mindset?!

On my daily walk past, there’s almost always someone there taking a photo of a friend with the statue.  I’ve often wondered why the other interesting sculptures in the city don’t attract anywhere near  as much interaction.

The Science Behind the Smile, in the latest Harvard Business Review, seems to provide part of the answer –  we are inherently and deeply social beings.  The author – Harvard Psychology Professor, Daniel Gilbert- summarises the scientific literature on the key to human happiness as being ’social’.  Whilst we  think that we would be happy if only we were wealthier, more famous, an All Black, or whatever, but in fact we are most  likely to be happy if we have strong bonds with  family and friends. What a relief for those of us who have recently realised we’ll never  make the All Blacks!

Happiness is the main focus of the first 2012  issue of the HBR.  After Gilbert’s interesting article , other writers  reiterate the importance of the social component to many positive  measures such as productivity. Outside work, high levels of social support are more likely to lead to longevity, whilst low social support is as bad for your health as high blood pressure.

A later article describes research showing that employees scoring the highest for providing social support are much more likely to receive a promotion in the next year, report much higher job satisfaction , and are far more likely to be engaged by their jobs.

Interesting isn’t it?  And it kind of makes sense on a practical level, doesn’t it? So John Plimmer, the so-called Father of Wellington continues to provide a social  service for Wellingtonians.

The Vital Smarts newsletter suggests an innovative approach to this seasonal challenge in their article titled: The Gift of Forgiveness. They recommend thinking about the stories we  tell ourselves about family feuds. Once we have our story, the villains are fixed and keep to character.  We, of course are always cast in the virtuous role.  As the article says: ‘We can’t feel differently about others until we think differently about them.’ Change the story and you change the dynamics.

The Vital Smarts website was developed around the interesting book: ‘Crucial Conversations’. If you want some more depth before you leap into the family fray, this is a good starting point.

Meanwhile, all of us at Communicate wish you a happy (peaceful) Christmas and a great New Year.

In figuring out the answers to that challenge, remember that the people who are your key relationships don’t need you to be hand-in-hand with them every day. Despite the fantastic contribution you could make to their lives, you will just annoy them if you overdo the relationship building thing.

All you need is for your target person to remember you when you need them to! To achieve this, it appears that the client needs to be reminded of your existence in a reasonably positive way, about every ninety days. That reminder might just be that you have had a brief chat in passing, that you have sent them a useful piece of information, included them in an invite, or, of course, made direct contact.

Every ninety days is only once a quarter. Seems easy and the smallness of New Zealand’s population does make the process easier. Its also it, but surprisingly hard to do in reality. The more you can automate the contact the better. There is a Kiwi networker who does it by his Friday Joke List. If you meet him, he always asks if you would like to be on his Friday Joke email. According to his wife, practically everyone says yes. And there he has it: a regular weekly reminder of his existence. We don’t want everyone doing this, but you could find your own approach.

For some ideas, take a look at Robyn Henderson’s networking tips. Henderson is an Australia, so her ideas are likely to work here too.

We are all busy but for some reason we place so much pressure on ourselves to “get things done before the Christmas break”.

How many of you are chasing your tail to make sure you have things up to date before the last week of December?

We get caught up in a whirlpool that threatens to pull us down and drag us to the depths-just the recipe for getting a bug as we take off to the beach. Or the migraine ,or whatever it is that reduces your chance of a relaxing break.

What I said to the session was how important it was not to lose sight of what is important to you.

The best tips are: Make it a conscious decision (if you were really thinking would you be doing it?)

Work on your ’should’s’ (the have to’s will look after themselves)

Ask yourself “Is this the best use of my time right now”?

Do something different when you get home e.g If you work alone go out and meet others,or if you are surrounded by people at work do something solitary -just for yourself

And finally LOVE what you are doing-life is awfully short

The author, Laura Helmuth, states categorically that there is very little difference between male and female brains, the few differences are minor and do not affect any ability. In fact she describes the ‘Men are from Mars’ view as: “Some of the sloppiest, shoddiest, most biased, least reproducible, worst designed and most over-interpreted research in the history of science…”  Now that’s telling us! And she’s no slouch – senior editor for the Smithsonian Magazine with a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from UCLA, Berkley.

Helmuth says that the research about gender differences of the ‘Men are from Mars’ variety are strongly influenced by the beliefs of the test subjects. So all that handy stuff around spatial ability, empathy, who talks most and  judging people’s emotions , does not relate to gender. Presumably socialisation has a big impact, but any gender differences are not due to the brain’s make-up.

When we are thinking about a communication challenge, don’t make excuses for the brain!  Here’s a link if you want to think about this similarity in the context of your love life. You can expect yourself to be able to  pick up on emotions plus shut up and listen – regardless of your gender.  Now where’s something else to blame?

The other nine myths?

• We only use 10% of our brain:  WRONG
• Snapshot memories are accurate: WRONG
• Its all downhill as we age: WRONG
• We have five senses: WRONG ( she mentions two other senses)
• The brain is hard wired and can’t be altered: WRONG
• A blow to the head can cause amnesia:WRONG
• We know what will make us happy: WRONG
• We see the world accurately:WRONG

What do you do?  Keep listening to the speaker and ignore the slides completely, or attempt to read the slides whilst the speaker keeps talking?  Neither option works.  Either you try to ignore the distraction of the slides and listen – hard to do.  Or you can chose the opposite – while you struggle to read the slide, the speaker has moved on to a new topic.

Don’t try to use slides as hand-outs for the audience to take away.  They are attending a face-to-face communication, not reading a book. Reading and listening are two completely different forms of communications, using different mental processes.  Audiences can’t read slides and listen at the same time. In fact, If you have too much on the slides, they are very hard to read on their own, even without the complication of listening.

I’ve talked previously about how brief good slide content must be.  Basically – hardly any words.  Let’s face it: If the slides were any use to someone who hadn’t attended the presentation, they probably didn’t communicate well during it!

Garr Reynolds at Presentation Zen has a good example of using speaker notes plus slides for a reasonable compromise on the slide+hand-out front.