In preparation for our next teleclass, I thought I would ask our guest Simon Heath the tough questions – like ‘who do you think you are?’ and ‘why should anyone listen to you?’ I mean, he’s an actor (among other things) – don’t they ‘lie’ for a living?

Well, rather than paraphrase, I thought you’d want to see his answers in his own words…

Novelist, playwright, actor & communications expert Simon Heath

Simon: The field of communication training is often very shallow. It has a tendency to offer tips and tricks, which treat surface level symptoms rather than underlying principles. I constantly have people tell me that their manager went to a training session and now they always have three arguments. Or in a one-on-one conversation, the other person will always say, “Let me play back to you what I heard”.

These tricks may work the first time, but they wear thin quickly and actually break down trust because they’re fake. People are told they are only allowed to use one powerpoint slide, so they cram as much content as they can into that slide. Then they are told they are only allowed five bullet points, so they make really long bullet points. Then they’re told to only use five to seven words per bullet point… or someone will count the number of times someone says “Ummmm.” The list of examples is endless – and they all miss the point.

And here’s the point: Focus on the core skills that allow you, the speaker to be authentic, clear and passionate and all the other stuff will fall in line. No tricks.

Michel: Ok, so what will people learn in this one?

Simon: They’ll learn the principles of good communication, from conversations to presentations to e-mails and everything in between. They’ll learn to structure their thinking and understand how to speak their ideas with presence. They’ll learn to shift their communication from being about content to being about ideas. They’ll learn how to use every communication as an opportunity to advance a central idea and motivate action. They’ll learn how to achieve world peace, eliminate poverty and create a harmony between environment and society. Okay, not that last part.

Michel: Yes, perhaps that last bit is a different teleclass. Tell us a little about your story; how did you develop your approach to communications?

Simon: I have spent twenty years as a professional theatre artist and sixteen as an executive coach. Theatre forces us to look at what motivates characters and how they express that motivation. This is an important lens with which to look at the world – if we can understand what motivates people, we can be more effective at connecting with them and ultimately persuading them of our ideas. Furthermore, theatre provides training in the basic skills of expression: face, voice and body. We are trained to use these as expressive tools to bring ideas and emotions to life for an audience. The combination of understanding what motivates people and the tools to bring ideas and emotions to life is very powerful in a professional context.

If anyone can help you structure a presentation, tell a great story and combine it all with compelling body language and stagecraft, it’s Simon – that’s why I invited (well, kinda begged) him to be my guest on this month’s teleclass. No matter how good you are at communications already, you will come away from this teleclass having upped your game significantly. Find out more about the teleclass, and about Simon, here.

How many times has someone given you a compliment, and you just shrugged it off, saying “It’s nothing”? Well, maybe it’s not nothing after all…

Five years ago, most of us were wondering how the universe would shake up between Facebook and LinkedIn, but today it’s clear that LinkedIn has emerged — true to its roots — as the primary platform for professional networking. While Facebook is doing all it can to expand in both social and professional arenas, it understandably continues to be defined as the more social of the social networks.

So are people using Linkedin effectively as the professional platform it’s intended to be? (More importantly, are you?) Browsing through hundreds of LinkedIn profiles, I see most people are making the same mistake on Linkedin as they do in other professional environments — and most of those mistakes stem from not getting the balance right between overly personal and, (more often), overly professional.

• You wouldn’t show up at a professional event wearing a bathing suit and dark glasses, so why would you use a profile photo of you on vacation, unless you’re in entertainment or the travel business? (Fortunately, most people get this one.)
• Telling people about your hobbies and outside interests is wonderful, but when those things feel like they’re more important than your business achievements, something’s wrong.
• Notwithstanding the above, your personality is your most distinctive value proposition; make sure it comes through in your profile photo and biography!
• Buzzwords and industry jargon don’t make you sound more professional; use them sparingly!
• Typos, chat acronyms (LOL) and basic grammar errors have no place on either your resume or your Linkedin profile.  (Of course, nobody’s perfect, so if you find a typo in my LinkedIn profile, please let me know!)

Headline Goes Here!

Finally, I am constantly amazed at how few people use the ‘headline’ field of their profile. This is like answering the question, ‘what do you do?’ with a blank stare.

The headline is your best opportunity to focus the profile visitor on the one key thing that sets you apart, and to positively distinguish you from everyone else with an otherwise similar profile. If you have left your headline field blank, it may be because either you don’t know what your greatest differentiating value is, or, you don’t know how to articulate it in the most compelling way. Either way, I suggest you start here — because your ability to communicate and focus on your greatest value and true competitive advantage is your foundation for massive increases in sales, leadership effectiveness and, yes, happiness!

Essentially yours,

Michel Neray
Chief Differentiation Officer
The Essential Message

P.S. A few people have asked me to look through the Essential Message ‘lens’ and review their Linkedin profiles. If this is a service you’d be interested in, please Contact Me.

The Power of Yes!

In the interest of complete transparency, I want to be absolutely clear about my intention in writing this article: My aim is to hit you hard and repeatedly with the ‘yes’ hammer until it’s permanently embossed on your head and in your mind. My hope is that you re-wire your knee-jerk reaction for a ‘yes’ auto-response – or better yet, you re-wire your brain so that you consciously choose a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response with no knee-jerking at all!

You probably already know that positive people are more fun to be around; that it doesn’t feel good when people say ‘no’ to you; and, that being open-minded is generally better than being critical or close-minded.

But what you may not know is just how overwhelming the evidence is a ‘yes’ mentality can help you in almost every aspect of your life and business.

In the 2008 movie, ‘Yes Man’, Jim Carrey’s character totally transforms his life (mostly for the better; always for the laugh) by saying ‘yes’ to any and all offers and requests. If you saw the movie, you might have found it funny – according to the film review site, Rotten Tomatoes, many people didn’t – but either way, it probably didn’t convince you to say ‘yes’ more. The original book by Danny Wallace, however, provided a much more compelling and realistic argument.

But I digress. Let’s take a look at the overwhelming evidence I referred to earlier.

Say ‘Yes’ to Creative Thinking and Better Brainstorming.

Although different creativity experts may have different specific processes to facilitate innovation and brainstorming, all agree that a key element involves ‘divergent thinking’.

According to Wikipedia, ‘Divergent thinking is a thought process or method used to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions.’

Divergent thinking requires suspension of judgment. In other words, just say ‘yes’ to every idea that comes up.

Tim Hurson, author of Think Better, says that “‘no’ kills ideas before they have a chance to breathe. The secret of creative thinking is let ideas live long enough to make them better.”

Someone with a ‘no’ mindset will tell you why an idea can’t be implemented. Someone with a ‘yes’ mindset will come up with a way for how it can be done. That’s when innovation happens.

Say ‘Yes’ to Higher Sales and More Persuasive Conversations.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is the study of how people communicate, think and change behavior at both the conscious and subconscious levels. For this reason, it is used in sales training as well as by some psychotherapists and life coaches.

In NLP, we learn that the quickest way to get someone to say ‘yes’ is to say ‘yes’ first.

Linda Ferguson, Master NLP Trainer and founder of one of the largest NLP training companies in the country, explains it this way.

“Our natural programming as human beings is to match the communication of people we want to understand. People who hear us say ‘yes’ are naturally conditioned to say ‘yes’ back to us.”

This is absolutely consistent with the law of reciprocation described in Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence.

If this sounds obvious, I should add that when I am taking participants through the Sales Telepathy workshop, I get a lot of eyebrows raised when I focus as much as I do on the first step of the process: identifying all the things you genuinely believe the prospect is doing right! After all, salespeople and marketers know that the value they add is directly related to the gaps and challenges that their prospects – so why focus on what they are doing right?

Because it demonstrates you honor and respect your prospect, and it improves the likelihood that they will honor and respect what you have to offer.

In my years as an Account Executive in advertising agencies, I credit the excellent relationships I had with our clients to my genuine willingness to understand their perspective no matter how different it was to the agency recommendation. I wasn’t just saying ‘yes’; I always pushed myself to see the value of their opinions.

Say ‘Yes’ to Better Negotiation and Conflict Resolution.

Negotiation and conflict resolution experts tell us that the first step to come to an agreement is to acknowledge the other person’s point of view. This is also true for dealing with difficult people – like a patient who has been not so patiently waiting for six hours to see a doctor in emergency.

In order to keep the situation from escalating or in order to stop the other person from digging in his or her heels, you begin by essentially saying, ‘yes, I understand.’

Simply put, others will more likely to listen if they feel heard.

Say ‘Yes’ to Better Relationships At Home Too.

When you view relationships in the context of a continuous cycle of sales and persuasive communications (“I’d love to go for an Indian curry for dinner tonight.”), negotiation (“But we’ve been to your Aunt Martha’s for the past three holidays!!”), and conflict resolution (You were two hours late picking me up and I got soaked on the street corner in the rain waiting for you!!”), you might begin to see how the same principles discussed above apply at home.

Fifty years of hearing ‘no, I don’t like your idea’ can have a detrimental effect on any relationship. In contrast, ‘yes, great idea’ on a consistent basis is wonderfully affirming. This does not suggest you should say ‘yes’ to everything – unless you want to end up in a movie with Jim Carrey.

Just Say ‘Yes’ More Often.

Corporations and other team environments frequently engage improv trainers, not to help their people be funnier (although that’s another positive outcome), but rather because improv helps engrain a ‘Yes’ mentality.

You see, one of the cornerstones of improvisational technique is ‘accepting an offer’, also known as “Yes, and…” Whatever your improv partner says, your job is to say ‘Yes and…’ Accepting an offer is usually accompanied by adding a new offer, often building on the earlier one.

Can you see the fundamental principles of better teamwork, collaboration, brainstorming, leadership, listening and productivity in ‘Yes and…’?

Come to think of it, can you see how ‘Yes and…’ is the same as accepting what is – which many people would say is also a fundamental principle of being present in the moment, of mindfulness and, yes, of happiness?

Are You Ready To Say ‘Yes’ To This Challenge?

Do you really have a ‘yes’ mindset?

You may think you say ‘Yes’ all the time. In fact, you may think you say ‘Yes’ too often! And maybe you do. But in my experience, many people say ‘Yes’ even though they are thinking ‘No’.

‘No’ may be the automatic first response because it was one of the first words we heard (repeatedly) as babies. Or maybe we tend to say ‘no’ out of fear of change or fear of the unknown or simply out of habit. Whatever the reason, it’s time to take yourself off auto-pilot and become consciously aware of your responses.

Here’s the challenge: Walk around with a little notepad or scorecard. Each time you hear the little voice in the back of your head saying ‘Yes’, mark it down on. Each time it says ‘No’, make a note of that too. No one has to see your score but yourself.

Try it for one day. Go on, I dare you.

Say ‘Yes’.

Essentially yours,

Michel Neray
Chief Differentiation Officer
The Essential Message

Michel Neray on Passion Point TV
with Irene Becker

I want to thank Irene Becker for a fantastic interview (and hug)! Check it out below (click the ‘Continue reading’ link)… and be sure to have a look at Irene’s other interviews with other passionate people!

Passion Point TV with Irene Becker

How attuned are you to your customers’
Persuasion Drivers?

In coaching, we talk about meeting your client where he or she is. In mediation and conflict resolution, we talk about seeing things from the other person’s point of view. In customer service and sales communications, we talk about creating a customer-centric business. In industrial design, we talk about designing the user-centred experience — adapting systems, objects and interfaces to fit the user instead of the other way around. In the Essential Message, we learn how to frame a competitive advantage and guide a conversation based on a genuine understanding of the other person’s ‘Persuasion Drivers’.

This principle is so pervasive and universal, you’d think that everyone in the world would have a deeply engrained habit and ability to walk in the other person’s boots and see their business through the eyes of the customer. And in fact, just about everyone claims to do it.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be the case.

How to walk in your customer’s boots 101.

Last week a company emailed me a proposal as a PDF attachment. The filename was ‘Essential_Message.pdf’. On the same day I received an electronic invoice from a supplier — the filename was ‘EssentialMessageINV.pdf’. And, just yesterday a potential partner emailed me a document in which he outlined his ideas on a new service we could offer as a joint venture. The filename? Yup, it was ‘EssentialMessage.pdf’.

And when I asked for a copy of an invoice from one of the top five hotel chains in the world, I had to rename the file they sent me before saving it to my hard drive in order to keep it from getting lost forever in all the other similarly named files.

In all the (real) examples above, the company named the file in a way that made sense for their systems and processes, but were counter-productive and frustrating for the customer. If they can’t be customer-centric for such a ‘little’ thing as naming a computer file, what can we expect from them with the big things?

These files are named in a way that make sense to the people who created them, but they make no sense to me!

Take this test!

Walking in your customer’s boot and seeing your business through their eyes is more than just a strategy — it’s a mindset that influences everything you do, right down to how you name the files you send your current and future clients.

1. Document filenames: Begin by considering what I’ve written about so far, and check the last file you sent to a client or strategic partner. Would they instantly know from the filename what the document is and why they have it on their computer? If yes, give yourself 2 points.

2. Your email signature and contact information: How easy is it for someone to add your contact information from your email into their addressbook?

If you have all your information in your signature, give yourself 2 points. If you have created a Vcard (.vcf) of your contact information, give yourself 4 points.(If you have no idea what I am talking about, take 30 seconds and search for, ‘how to create a vcard’.)

3. Meeting invitations: Online calendars allow you to create an event and then invite others to it. If they accept your invitation, the event is automatically added to their calendar.

While not everyone uses digital tools, give yourself 2 points if you send meeting requests and other events in a form that makes it easy for people to add them to their own calendars. But, if you name your events, ‘Phone meeting with Michel’ or something equally useless to the other person, deduct 4 points

Don’t laugh, this happened to me — and when my calendar alarm highlighted the event, I had no clue who I was supposed to call!

So the next time you look at ways to grow your business, start with the simple things you do every day: look at the proposals, event invitations, sales letters, invoices and other correspondence you send out. If the titles and filenames fit your system better than it does theirs, that may be an indication you could use a little help in looking at your business through the eyes of your customer.

Starting with the simple things gives you the practice you need to develop the right mindset for when you tackle the more difficult things, like describing your business in terms of the challenges you solve instead of the benefits you promise. (Hint, those challenges are your customers’ Persuasion Drivers!)

As for the company that sent me their proposal, I’ll still give them serious consideration — as soon as I figure out where the file is on my computer….

Essentially yours,

Michel Neray
Chief Differentiation Officer
The Essential Message

P.S. Have you seen other examples where even the best-meaning people and businesses are a little less attuned to the needs of the people they serve than they might think they are? Post your comments here!