Category: K.E.E.N. skills

How to Deal With Rejection-Prone Processes

In his post ‘Effort in the face of near-certain rejection‘, Seth Godin shows that there are two fundamental strategies to deal with processes that involve rejection (such as for example, submitting resumes, book drafts, commercial proposals…).

  • The first approach is statistical: go for volume, there will be some acceptance along the way;
  • the second approach is to invest in the relationships; instead of volume, go for quality and emotional connection.

The second approach is harder, requires emotional work, but probably more effective on the long term. And by using the first approach you are more likely to disrupt people and create bad feelings. Finally it may not take more time to apply the second approach either.

“The thing is, people can tell. And they’re significantly more likely to give you an interview, make a donation, answer your question or do that other thing you’re hoping for if you’ve signalled that you’re actually a caring, focused, generous human.”

So, let’s try to create connections instead of sending our resume or our book draft blindly expecting someone to respond positively!

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How Posture Can Be Heard Across the Phone

We commonly know that a smile can be heard over the phone, but what about our overall posture? In his post about ‘Mastering the sales call‘, Dom Moorhouse explains how posture is an essential part of the success of a sales call.

“Your body position and language is really important. […] Stand up and consciously smile going into the call. At the very least sit up straight; put your body into a productive state. Remember sales is primarily a transference of enthusiasm”

I find this approach interesting. It combines what we know about presenting of singing in terms of dynamic posture with the fact the effect of our posture may be instinctively heard over the phone.

So next time you have an important phone call, be careful to adopt a dynamic posture, and smile!

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How to Easily Improve Your Life: Associate with the Right People

Robin Sharma writes something which is continuously demonstrated by more and more studies (specifically on social networks): to improve your life, “associate with people who you want to be and live like“.

Robin Sharma quotes the work of a Darmouth professor, Nicholas Christakis who writes in his book ‘Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives — How Your Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do‘: “Social networks help us achieve what we could not achieve alone. One biological mechanism that makes behavior contagious may be the so-called mirror neuron system in the human brain. Our brains practice doing actions we merely observe in others.”

Associating with people that are what we want to become is the most effective way of changing. What about doing this more consciously?

 

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How Challenge and Teaching Combine in Self-Development

In ‘Ego is the Enemy‘, Ryan Holiday exposes a method for self-development called the plus, minus and equal. “The mixed martial arts pioneer and multi – title champion Frank Shamrock has a system he trains fighters in that he calls plus, minus, and equal. Each fighter, to become great needs to have someone better that they can learn from, someone lesser who they can teach , and someone equal that they can challenge themselves against”

I find this idea of combining challenge, teaching and training a great idea in self-development.

I have the experience of how enriching teaching can be as it forces to order one’s knowledge and deliver it in a consistent manner, enriched by the questions of the trainees.

At the same time, looking upwards to someone stronger as a challenge is a great way to improve (this can be for specific skills only, as I find it difficult with time to have a role model covering all the skills I aspire to).

And having a sparing partner to exchange ideas and train on a regular basis is great too.

So, when do you adopt the plus, minus and equal rule in your personal development?

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How Our Endeavors Require Time and Patience to Develop

Seth Godin’s post ‘Low & Slow (vs. fear)‘ touched me because of his comparison with many of our creative endeavours with bread-making: it requires ferment and lots of time. Entrepreneurship requires time and can’t be rushed through.

“Much of the work we do as creators, as leaders, as people seeking to make change–it needs to ferment, to create character and tension and impact. And if we rush it, we get nothing worth very much.”

But the interesting part of the post is also about the flipside, related to procrastination: “Sometimes, we mistakenly believe that we’re building something that takes time, but what we’re actually doing is hiding. We stall and digress and cause distractions, not because the work needs us to, but because we’re afraid to ship”

He concludes: “Impatience can be a virtue if it causes us to leap through the fear that holds us back.” And at the same time we should be patient and let our endeavors ferment to deliver the best quality. That may be the most difficult contradiction of entrepreneurship.

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How to Treat the Response to Disappointment As A Training Ground

Leo Babauta came up with the concept of ‘Beautiful Practice Ground: The Secret to Training Your Mind‘. I like it very much. The concept is to use those disappointment moments where we did not manage to do what we committed to, such as a new behavior or habit, as a learning moment.

“This habitual way of responding to difficulty is actually what’s standing in [our] way. Training the mind to respond differently in this exact kind of situation is probably the most important training [we] could do.”

“When you notice yourself having difficulty — someone is frustrating you, you are disappointed in yourself, you’re procrastinating on a hard task or habit you’re trying to form, you’re feeling resentful or criticizing yourself — start to recognize this as your Beautiful Practice Ground. And see it as a wonderful opportunity to practice.”

It is an exceptionally fruitful viewpoint to see our frustrations, stresses and guilt feelings as learning opportunities. Let’s pause, breathe and see what we can learn from it – and change our response from there.

When to you start identifying those new training grounds?

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How Ego Kills Creativity and Talent

Quoted in the excellent book ‘Ego is the Enemy‘ by Ryan Holiday: “The performance artist Marina Abramovi? puts it directly : “ If you start believing in your greatness , it is the death of your creativity ””

Ego kills creativity and talent. It’s a well known fact however we still witness too many situations that demonstrate the truth of this assertion.

It is difficult to stay cold headed when one finds success. We tend to believe we are special, and this is the beginning of the end.

Maybe it is worth remembering that success is as much the result of luck than the result of talent and creativity. And talent can be improved through sheer work; luck can be improved too in a certain measure, but it takes other skills. Ego will kill luck that is often based on good relationships with people; and it will also kill talent because one will not put any more the work in. So, let’s try to avoid ego even when we are successful!

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How Curiosity is As Important As Intelligence in a Complex World

This assertion came up in an influential HBR paper ‘Curiosity Is as Important as Intelligence‘. Of course, this is already suspected for a long time, like the famous quote by Einstein on the subject.

The interesting side of the HBR paper is that it links directly curiosity with the ability to navigate in complexity. It takes the position that it is a skill that can be learned, and that it is an essential skill in today’s world. ” [Curiosity Quotient] has not been as deeply studied as EQ and IQ, but there’s some evidence to suggest it is just as important when it comes to managing complexity in two major ways. First, individuals with higher CQ are generally more tolerant of ambiguity. This nuanced, sophisticated, subtle thinking style defines the very essence of complexity. Second, CQ leads to higher levels of intellectual investment and knowledge acquisition over time, especially in formal domains of education, such as science and art”

So let’s develop our Curiosity Quotient actively!

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How Important The Manner to Give Feedback Can Be

A large part of my work as a consultant is to give feedback to my clients, for example when doing reviews of the current way of working on a specific project. The intent must be to give feedback without hiding aspects which need to be improved, and at the same time giving it in a way that does not create defensiveness and rejection.

How NOT to give feedback

It would be absolutely counter-productive to give accurate feedback on issues, that will never be corrected because the message was dismissed.

This is absolutely essential and it is amazing how often this aspect is overlooked. As a consequence, when performing a review, we can spend a very substantial part of the allocated time (up to 30%) showing our conclusions and getting challenged by various levels of the organisation, modifying the manner in which to present our conclusions in a manner that is palatable to the organisation.

In reality, the process of giving feedback must be to generate a powerful conversation that allows the person or the organization on the receiving end to absorb and reword the conclusion in a manner that leads to its acceptance, and finally action.

The aim of a successful feedback is to generate the right conversation.

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How to Deal With Tearing Thoughts

I encourage you to read this beautiful post on Tearing Thoughts by Om Swami. It is a post about how to deal with those negative thoughts appearing out of blue and “running amok in our mind like an elephant gone wild razing our peace and calm in practically no time“.

Om Swami recipe for dealing with Tearing Thoughts

The good news is “Dropping a thought is a practice in meditation that can be learned and cultivated. Once you master it, all you have to is to hold a mini self-dialog and gently shift your attention on something positive.”

But further from practicing with dealing with such negative thoughts (which we can’t stop appearing, such is the workings of the mind), the key lesson here is also that “When we accept the cyclical nature of our life and thoughts, we ease up a bit. We start to realize that not everything in life can happen the way I want. Not all my dreams will come true. That universe has its own plans too. Once we get a handle on it, the rest is as easy as rocket science“. An Om Swami gives his personal recipe (refer to the image) to help keep tearing thoughts away. A great recipe for sure!

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How to Remain Open to Putting Our Beliefs in Question

In a beautiful post on Tearing Thoughts, Om Swami quotes a story about clinging too much to a falsehood. It ends with a deep learning: “The Buddha said, “Sometime, somewhere you take something to be the truth. But if you cling to it too strongly, then even when the truth comes in person and knocks on your door, you will not open it.”

Many people cling to beliefs that are false, or outdated. It gives them a sense of security. If they face a situation that clearly demonstrates how their belief is wrong, they can sometimes refuse to accept it. Or the change can be so tearing that it destroys the person.

Keeping one’s mind open requires quite a different mindset. It requires to remain open to the fact that one’s beliefs are just a working assumption that appears to prove right in the majority of cases encountered so far in on’s life . It is the core of the scientific approach (a theory is right until it is proven wrong), even if even in that remit, it can take a change of generation to get new theories mainstream. This position is more difficult to adopt but then provides a lot of value as it diminishes pain greatly.

Remain open to the fact that your beliefs are just working assumptions.

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Why Discovering Our Strengths is the Path to Success

Marcus Buckingham at Gallup has long affirmed that instead on focusing on our dreams, we should rather focus on our strengths. According to him, discovering our strengths is the shortest path to success.

Basically he says that rather than thinking we can be be whatever we want or hope to be, which ends up being vague and may send us down paths that are not ours, we should work on becoming our best.

While we can learn anything we put our mind to, each of us is wired to excel at some things. Discovering is one part of the process of finding our sweet spot. And if we become extremely good at something, we will certainly like it.

Are your dreams aligned with your strengths? I am not expecting a full alignment because it is always possible to develop skills slightly out of our comfort zone. Still, are your dreams quite aligned with your strengths?

 

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