K.E.E.N. skills | The Fourth Revolution Blog

Why You Need to Choose Conversation Over Comments

Speaking about the web, Valeria Maltoni notes: “You have a conversation problem. And social networks have exacerbated it. People think they are conversing. Instead, they are commenting — big difference.”

Commenting is about judgment. It is a one way affair. Conversing is about exchanging views, possibly opinions. It is a two way affair. It can generate new ideas and views from the confrontation. And it makes all the difference.

How often in our lives do we comment, and forget to converse? How often do we pass judgment, without giving the opportunity for the other to explain or discuss?

We often need to consciously open the door to conversation instead of just producing a series of comments. We need to act instead of judging and avoiding the interaction.

Hat tip to Valeria Maltoni’s post ‘People don’t Converse: they Comment. Big Difference‘, originally written about online commenting and marketing – and blog commenting!.

How to Negotiate Properly To Reach Agreement

In the book “Getting to Yes” by Roger Fisher and William Ury (veterans of international and corporate negotiations), the useful approach of Principled Negotiation is exposed. It is based on four powerful points:

negotiating — Avoid this particular negotiation tactics!

People: Separate the people from the problem.
Interests: Focus on interests, not positions.
Options: Invent multiple options looking for mutual gains before deciding what to do.
Criteria: Insist that the result be based on some objective standard.

Of course proper and consistent implementation of these principles requires some practice. It also sometimes requires quite some work to get the other party to agree on this approach and play the game of that type of negotiation.

If I had to choose one of these points as the most important, the creative ability to come up with a number of options (and at the same time, to be sufficiently resilient from an emotional point of view to be able to assess the actual pros and cons of these options), would probably be my choice. Having as many options as possible a key asset in a negotiation. Be creative!

How to Become Quickly Better than the Best Experts

Also described by James Altucher as the ‘Tony Robbins Method‘:

at first you don’t know anything.
you find 5 people who are the experts in the world.
you extensively interview them.
you figure out the most simple things they have in common with each other.
you do that simple thing over and over and over and over (repetition).

Actually that is a great recipe to be even better than an expert in much less time – because you will thus figure out something none of those best experts had figured out as a key finding in their field.

Ready to try?

Hat tip to James Altucher in his interview with Tony Robbins about his new book

How to Use Conflict to Shape an Engaging Presentation

Like good movies, great presentations need to be memorable. To be memorable, they need to tell a story that will stay with the audience and that can be talked about further.

ratatouille — Ratatouille, an engaging story about a struggle to achieve a passion

“No conflict, no story. (…) Make things clear, engaging, and memorable by illustrating the struggle” recommends Garr Reynolds, a presentation guru, one of his posts ‘10 tips for improving your presentations & speeches‘. He continues: “We can certainly improve almost any talk by being mindful of what is at stake and what the obstacles are to overcome. Here’s a definition of Story from the book ‘Story Proof’: “A character-based narration of a character’s struggles to overcome obstacles and reach an important goal.””

Showing struggle and vulnerability is a great way to connect with an audience and create engagement. Highlight the conflicts at stake, personal or organizational, and do not hesitate to be overly dramatic in the way you present. Your audience will stay with you and will remember what your message is.

Rework your presentation to highlight the conflict and the struggle.

And show the way.

How to Accelerate Decision-Making in a Negotiation

One of the best proven methods to accelerate decision-making in a negotiation is to set up a deadline, which can be arbitrary if needed (or, an existing deadline which importance for the issue at hand is overly exaggerated). Actually, arbitrarily-set deadlines are an excellent way to accelerate decision-making, potentially in one’s favor if quick decision is required.

Arbitrary deadlines can be a date in a calendar, but the most effective way is to link them with an event that is planned and looks difficult to move: a flight, an overseas trip, long-planned offline holidays. It can even be another deadline already given to an other party when it comes to compete for the same resources! (let’s extend the concept – we can already envisage a situation where deadlines can be created arbitrarily by informing a party of an imaginary deadline given to a second party which had set its deadline based on another arbitrary time like the birthday of the wife of the founder – imagination can be never-ending).

Deadlines are also great not only for the other party but for ourselves because it gives a maximum time-frame where we can be bothered by this particular issue.

On major issues, decision points and negotiations, do not hesitate to set arbitrary deadlines. It will put the system in tension and will lead to much more effective positioning and decision-making.

How Important Decisions Really Get Taken in a Negotiation

“No matter how many people are involved in a negotiation, important decisions are typically made when no more than two people are in the room” say Fisher and Ury in the basic book on negotiation ‘Getting to Yes‘.

Important international negotiations always have to conclude locking together the relevant leaders

Preparation with a wide team is important, even essential in complicated subjects so as to make sure that the key decision points are properly identified and their real consequences properly assessed and understood by each party.

Still, when difficult, the final decision is always most efficiently determined in an eye-to-eye meeting between the two leaders.

It is important to recognize this mechanism and invest in the personal relationship beforehand at leader level so as to make this final moment of the negotiation easier. It also helps when it is part of a series of negotiations where both parties could appreciate if the other party was interested in building a long term relationship.

If you are the leader, don’t be afraid once the issues have been exposed and all the easy points agreed, to close yourself up with the leader of the other party to take the final decisions. It might take some guts to support whatever final position you will take together, but it is the only way to be effective and reach a decision.

Two people face to face. It is how all successful tough negotiations end up. Don’t be scared. Go for it!

Why Would We Admire People More for Trying than for their Successes?

That’s Pixar storytelling rule #1: “You admire a character for trying more than for their successes“. Hence Pixar characters spend the entire movie trying (though they often succeed at the end). Why does it elicit such admiration?

I think that comes from the fact that we are all trying, and we know it is hard. Thus when we see others trying and eventually succeeding we know that they have had to overcome many self-imposed barriers and many other obstacles created by their environment. If characters were to succeed too easily, we would of course just take it for granted – and we would know that it is not how life really is like. We also tend to connect more easily with a person that is visibly struggling to achieve hard stuff – like us.

In our life, showing that we are struggling (and the associated vulnerability) is difficult but is probably rewarding, as many examples abound of people who have decided to share how they feel inadequate and still succeed (for more on this, refer to the books and the TED presentation (one of the top 5 most watched ever) of Brene Brown).

Personally, like many of us, I tend to try to hide my difficulties, my struggles. I tend to believe it does not fit social and professional life, as we always strive to look perfect and with everything going well. Maybe it would be worth showing a bit more how imperfect I feel sometimes – avoiding whining of course? Food for thought for the new year. You might hear more about my struggles!

HT to bitrebels.com for the illustration.

Why We Should Practice Silence as a Powerful Transformation Tool

Silence has got great power, sometimes greater than words. “Sometimes defined a deafening void, silence is an art. It comes with its own grammar: forging words that go with any sound or message is no trivial thing. Silence is a dynamic and ever changing force.” – writes Valeria Maltoni in an excellent post on this subject.

We struggle to use the power of silence; on the contrary we tend to try to fill all our waking moments with noise and content. We try to fill our conversation with words. We feel uneasy with silence. It is as though we fear silence.

Yet in my experience, it is in the silent moments that shifts and transformation happen. It is in the silent moments that reflection comes to fruition. It is in the silent moments that I reflect on what has happened and that I find a sense to my actions and to my life. It is in common silent moments that my relationships with people deepens, and mutual understanding and empathy spread.

It is those silent moments we fear where we shift our understanding and relationships. Those we flee from. But we should, on the contrary, be grateful for them.

We must practice silence and pause. Not that we should transform our days into silent days. But we must know how to entertain the right moments of silence, those that are powerful to transform lives.

Try to practice the power of silence. It will transform your life.

How to Make Communication Easier: Develop Trust!

“In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust” – says Ben Horowitz in his book ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things‘.

Thus, one way to improve communication is to develop trust beforehand. The reason is obvious – it removes a lot of filters and also, adds a number of assumptions that do not need to be verbalized again during actual communication.

It is actually what marketing often tries to do: by develop trust in a brand or a person, it makes communication easier by removing obstacles to communication.

Without going into the techniques of marketing, there are a number of occasions where developing trust first before attempting to communicate a complicated message is probably the most effective way to communicate – even if that requires an investment of time and interaction.

It is possible to build trust effectively and with limited effort and time, so do not skip that step. Next time you have something complicated or difficult to communicate, do not hesitate to build trust first!

What People Will Remember from You

I love that quote: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel”- Maya Angelou.

This is true in all sorts of settings, so let’s review a few areas where it is applicable:

When doing public talks or presentations, the real important experience lies at the emotional level. This requires physical comfort, and creating strong emotions in the audience, either through stunning experiences and images, or by referring to people’s own emotional-laden issues.

When creating art, paintings, writing a book or cutting a movie, the emotions that will be created in the viewer is what will make the creation memorable on the long term.

When working with people in a team, what people will remember is any emotions, good or bad, you’ve created during that time. This also applies to one-off interviews.

The list is long. My points was to emphasize how this quote, which is most often used in the field of romantic relationships, can be applied throughout our lives.

You want to be remembered? Create emotions.

How Love is About Giving Someone the Power to Destroy Us

The other day I was reading this great definition of Love – “Love is giving someone the power to destroy us and trusting they won’t use it“.

This is such a true statement that it stopped me in my tracks. Here are a few aspects I find great in this statement:

love is about giving first,
it is about giving unconditionally, even with the risk of self-destruction,
love is about creating vulnerability,
love is about giving others power over ourselves.

True love might not even consider whether the other will use it to destroy us. It then becomes secondary.

Vulnerability is at the root of all great relationships, as long as it is given voluntarily. How do you render yourself vulnerable to your loved ones?

How True Leaders Focus on Growing People

What makes the difference in terms of leadership is how true leaders focus on developing people. They understand it is vital part of their duty, and how only this behavior creates the conditions for great work.

“The leaders of great organizations do not see people as a commodity to be managed to help grow the money. They see the money as the commodity to be managed to help grow their people.” – says Simon Sinek in ‘Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t‘.

But that should not stay at the level of lip service and budget assignment, or even the creation of company university. A clear symptom of this is when true leaders go themselves to teach classes to their managers and employees; from the company introduction to newcomers to advanced classes about managerial and leadership skills.

Actually, the question merits to be asked. If a leader does not spontaneously involve himself in mentoring and training, and spend a significant par of his time in these activities. can he really be a true leader?

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