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What does charisma look like?

November 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Answer: Richard Feynman delivering the first of his famous six lectures on the foundations of physics.

http://research.microsoft.com/apps/tools/tuva/#data=4%7C6b89dded-3eb8-4fa4-bbcd-7c69fe78ed0c%7C%7C

Check it out and see what you think. Feynman sounds enthusiastic, authoritative, articulate, funny, and confident. He also smiles a lot and uses expansive gestures and comes across as a friendly, likeable guy.  His charismatic style is certainly worth studying and emulating.

Filed Under: being charismatic, blog, communication, what does charisma look like? Tagged With: , , , , ,

How can I communicate numbers and statistics in a way that makes sense?

November 9, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Answer: Translate your meaningless numbers into word pictures:

In this video, Richard Feynman re-scales the dimension of atoms in a way that makes sense to us:

Filed Under: clever ways to get ideas across, communication, presenting numbers and statistics in a meaningful way Tagged With: ,

How can I persuade others to accept a concept that has traditionally encountered strong opposition?

October 13, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Answer: Change the concept’s name. Re-badge the concept by giving it a fresh, new, more attractive name.

Watch this video snippet to see what I mean:

Filed Under: being influential/persuasive, communication Tagged With: , , , ,

Am I a good leader?

July 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

 

Answer: Check out this list and decide for yourself.

Being a good leader looks hard, but do-able–if you have good ideas, passion, courageous patience–and lots and lots of social intelligence!

Leadership is about:

  •  taking people to a pace that they would not go on their own;
  • disrupting the core and upsetting the status quo;
  • possessing and utilizing the proper skills to envision a preferred future;
  • having the ability and commitment to persistently scan the horizon for trends that would either negatively or positively impact that future;
  • back-casting by creating strategies that lead toward and enforce the preferred future;
  • designing and promoting an environment of creativity in order to develop strategies to avoid obstacles to the preferred future;
  • supporting and encouraging the development of disruptive innovations that foster, rather than impede, the future;
  • leading the diffusion of those innovations into the general population;
  •  integrating change-theory strategies that move people forward in a unified manner;
  • mentoring managers and followers along the way to keep them focused on the ends.

(by Barry A. Doublestein, MD, Chairman, The Institute of Leadership in Medicine,  Harvard Business Review June 2010, page 18, writing a response to the article  “Turing Doctors in Leaders”, Harvard Business Review article by Thomas H Lee April 2010)

 

  

Filed Under: being a good leader, communication

How can I listen better?

July 5, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Answer:

Apply this “campaign” to help you develop your listening skills.

1. Prepare the groundwork for good listening:

 

  1. Learn to read  micro facial expressions.Go to Paul Ekman’s F.A.C.E Training site and pay the $20 to receive the METT Original On-line training in  how to identify fleeting expressions of the seven primary emotions of  happiness, sadness, contempt, disgust, fear, surprise and anger.  

  2. Learn to concentrate well.
    Develop your ability to concentrate by practising mindfulness and meditation. Both are proven to improve concentration.  Listening well is just another concentration task. 
  3. Practise listening really hard: 
    You can practise listening really hard in these two ways:(a) Do specific listening comprehension exercises.  
    Here, you listen to something for a few minutes and then get tested on how well can remember what you just heard. Click here for some excellent online listening exercises.(b) Listen “really hard” while watching someone speak  on the TV or on a video.  
    Pretend that newsreader or person being interviewed or giving the lecture is just talking to you. Your job is to be a rapt listener. Throw yourself into the exercise by listening hard and  making supportive noises and facial expressions and gestures. 
  4. Put a high value on learning to listen well. Hardly anyone listens well. It’s a beautiful and rare gift to give someone your full, undivided attention. Having someone be fully present while we talk makes us feel truly valued. In fact, listening well is  one of the five identified components of  charismatic behavior.  It’s not that difficult to listen well–the main problem seems to be that we don’t assign a high priority to listening well. Most of us would rather talk intently than listen intently! I know I certainly do!
  5. Watch yourself in action.How well do you listen? Why don’t you find out by arranging to get youreslf audio- or video-taped while you are having a conversation.  You may be shocked to discover how often you interrupt or argue or fidget or give off negative emotions or look dead-pan and uninterested.  After watching yourself in action,  you may say, “I had no idea I am such a pain. I’d HATE to be on the receiving end of me in a conversation!”

    That’s great news to find that out! At least now you know you have a problem and what needs to be fixed. You can’t fix what you don’t know.

2. Just before you enter a conversation:

  1. Run through the key things you want to do while listening.The most important thing is to remember to pay full attention. If you just get that right,  most of the other good listening tips will fall into place. 
     
  2. Take a few deep breaths to calm yourself.  
    You’ll listen much better if you feel calm and in control.
     
  3. Have a strong cup of coffee about half an hour before. 
    Listening hard with all your might takes a lot of concentration. Caffeine may help you concentrate. Don’t worry–you won’t always have to “caffeine yourself up” before a conversation!
     
  4. Memorise these magic phrases for you to use to repair the damage, should you stuff up:
    “Whoops! I’m sorry. I interrupted. Please go on. What were you about to say?”
    “Anyway, enough talking from me. I want to hear what you’ve been up to.”
  5. Mentally rehearse doing all the right “listening” things in the upcoming conversation.
    Visualise yourself paying close attention, not interrupting, etc.

 

During a conversation:

  1. Deliberately wait two seconds after the other person has stopped talking before you start to talk.

    This way, you  make sure the other person really has  finished and isn’t just taking a pause.  You can use those two seconds to process what the other person has just said and to plan a better response. While you’re waiting out the two seconds, wear an expression that says “Wow, what you’ve just said is thought-provoking!” This way, rather than think your pause before speaking is odd, the other person will feel flattered to think you are thinking so hard about what they’ve just said.
     
  2. Be an dynamic, supportive listener.
     
    (a) make supportive grunts and murmurs;
    (b) nod your head appropriately;
    (c) make expressive facial expressions that match the content and feelings of the speaker;
    (d) touch the speaker supportively when appropriate;
    (e) laugh generously when the speaker laughs or says something amusing;
    (f) interrupt occasionally with  short supportive words and phrases  such as “How incredible!” “You’re kidding?” “Did she really say that?” or with probing questions such as  “How did you feel about that?” “What did she say  when you said that?”or empathic remarks such as “You must have felt really sad about that” “That’s perfectly understandable. I would have done the same thing myself.”
     
  3. Adopt a good mindset to listening. Conversation isn’t a contest where the goal is to see who can grab the conversation ball and keep hold of it the longest! Nor is it to show the other person how fascinating you are! it’s better to think of a conversation as a two-way joint creation of something mutually satisfying. Here are two good conversational goals that will help you be a better listener:
     
    (a) Aim  to learn at least one useful piece of information from the other person. Listen hard  and ask good follow-up questions, or you might miss it!
    (b) Practise loving-kindness. Commit to giving the other person your gift of “being fully present” while they speak. Being really listened to will be such a rare treat for them and will make them feel very happy.
     
  4. Monitor your response to what the other person is saying. Watch out for these bad thinking traps:
     
    (a) “I know what she’s about to say (and it’s wrong!)”
    (b) “What she’s saying is so wrong!”
    (c) “I know the answer to her problem she’s telling me.”
    (d) “I have lots to say about this topic too and if I don’t say it now, I’ll forget!”
    (e) “I know this topic better than she does so I should take over.”
    (f) “What she’s saying  is boring and she’s so slow in getting to her point!”
  5. Watch that your negative emotions don’t leak out, such as:
    (a) shaking your head
    (b) frowning in disapproval
    (c ) rolling your eyes in contempt
    (d) opening your eyes wide in disbelief
    (e) crossing your arms and turning away
    (f) breaking eye contact, and so on.
     
  6. Check every now and then  that you are in sync with the speaker. If  your feelings and thinking and body language don’t feel perfectly  in-tune with those of your speaker, listen even harder.  The harder you listen (nonjudgmentally), the more in-sync you’ll be.
     
  7. Practise the challenging skill of “entertaining the other person’s idea without accepting it. Just “try the ideas on” while temporarily suspending judgment; try hard to see the ideas from the speaker’s point of view. You can’t do this if you are often thinking “How stupid!”.
     
  8. Practise focusing on the speaker’s whole message:  not just their words.  Look for the feeling behind the words, look for the message that isn’t said but may be implied, try to guess why the speaker is bringing this topic up, look at the speaker’s facial gestures and body language and tone of voice. If you focus on all these things,  you’ll be more than busy enough without having your mind wander off because it’s bored or underloaded. And you’ll be mastering the important social intelligence skill of empathic accuracy.
     
  9. Trot these magic phrases to repair the damage when you’ve stuffed up:
     
    (a) When you’ve caught yourself interrupting the speaker:
    “Oh, I’m so sorry. I interrupted you. Please keep talking.”
    (b)When you’ve caught yourself talking too long about yourself:
    “Anyway,  enough about me.  I want to hear about you and what you’ve been up to.”
Filed Under: listening skills

Dale Carnegie tips on public speaking

June 21, 2011 by Leave a Comment

 

  1.  
    1. Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.
    2. “How will your presentation solve your audience’s problems?” If your presentation is able to solve their problem then they will listen to you.
    3. Only the prepared speaker deserves to be confident.
    4. The royal road to a man’s heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.
    5. Tell the audience what you’re going to say, say it; then tell them what you’ve said.
    6. So the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.
Filed Under: communication, Dale Carnegie tips on public speaking, public speaking

Clever use of metaphor and analogy to explain hard-to-understand ideas

June 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Some concepts are hard to explain, especially if the concepts are totally foreign to our readers and listeners.  But if we can tell our readers and listeners what the concepts are like,  then maybe they’ll get it.  That is the  job of the metaphor and analogy:  to build  bridges of understanding.  (How about that!  I just used a metaphor myself !)

1. Using metaphor and analogies to explain how to meditate:

Meditation is very hard — lots of  people try but quickly give up. It’s hard controlling our chaotic, unbidden thoughts.  So how can we explain some handy meditation techniques to someone?

In her best-selling memoir Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert used some clever metaphors involving of monkeys, slaves and row boats to explain  meditation.  The rowboat-analogy was personally very helpful for me in my primitive meditation attempts:

Like most humanoids, I am burdened with what the Buddhists call the “monkey mind” — the thoughts that swing from limb to limb, stopping only to scratch themselves, spit and howl. From the distant past to the unknowable future, my mind swings wildly through time, touching on dozens of ideas a minute, unharnessed and undisciplined.  This in itself is not necessarily a problem; the problem is the emotional attachment that goes along with the thinking.  Happy thoughts make me happy, but — whoops — how quickly I swing again into obsessive worry, blowing the mood; and then it’s the remembrance of an angry moment and I start to get hot and pissed off all over again; and then my mind decides it might be a good time to start feeling sorry for itself, and loneliness follows promptly.  You are, after all, what you think.  Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

The other problem with all this swinging through the vines of thought is that you are never where you  are.  You are always digging in the past or poking at hte future, but rarely do you rest  in this moment.  It’s something like the habit of my dear friend Susan, who —  whenever she sees a beautiful place — exclaims in near panic, “It’s so beautiful here!  I want to come back here someday!” and it takes all of my persuasive powers to try to convince her that she is already here.  If you’re looking for union with the divine, this kind of forward/backward whirling is a problem…

But to stay in the present moment requires dedicated one-pointed focus.  Different meditation techniques teach one-pointedness in different ways — for instance, by focusing your eyes on a single point of light, or by observing the rise and fall of your breath.  My Guru teaches meditation with the help of a mantra, sacred words or syllables to be repeated in a focused manner.  Mantra has a dual function.  For one thing, it gives the mind something to do.  It’s as if you’ve given the monkey a pile of 10,000 buttons and said, “Move these buttons, one at a time, into a new pile.”  This is a considerably easier task for the monkey than if you just plopped him in a corner and asked him not to move. The other purpose of mantra is to transport you to another state, rowboatlike, through the choppy waves of the mind.  Whenever your attention gets pulled into a cross-current of thought, just return to the mantra, climb back into the boat and keep going.  The great Sanskrit mantras are said to contain unimaginable powers, the ability to row you, if you can stay with one, all the way to the shorelines of divinity. (From Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, p 138-9)

2. Using analogy and metaphor to explain how the brain changes with stimulation:

The brain Merzenich describes is not an inamimate vessel that we fill; rather it is more like a living creatures with an appetite, one that can grow and change itself with proper nourishment and exercise. (from The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, p 47)

3.  A clever analogy to  explain how hard it is to tease apart the separate contributions of our genes and our environment on how we turn out:

Do our genes or our experiences determine who we become? That debate turns out to be pointless, based on the fallacy that our genes and our environment are independent of each other;  it’s like arguing over which contributes more to the area of a rectangle, the length or the width. (From Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman, p 150)

4.  A clever analogy to explain the pitfalls of an organization that pursues money as its only goal:

When I find [organizations whose only thrust is to make money], I also find a great deal of negative synergy in the culture, generating such things as interdepartmental rivalries, defensive and protective communication, politicking, and masterminding. We can’t effectively thrive without making money, but that’s not sufficient reason for organizational existence. We can’t live without eating, but we don’t live to eat. (From 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stepen Covey, p 302)

5.  Richard Feynman using a chess analogy to explain how scientists discover the laws of nature:

6.  A  computer metaphor:

But is that our fundamental nature? Or, to use yet another computer metaphor, is that our default setting? When we enter the world are we wired to be passive and inert? Or are we wired to be active and engaged? (From Drive by Daniel Pink, p 87)

7.FedEx days:

Where workers are given 24 hours to work to some up with their own solution to a problem and they have to deliver something overnight.

“Over the years, this odd little exercise has produced an array of software fixes hat might otherwise never have emerged. Says one engineer, “Some of the coolest stuff we have in our product today has come from FedEx days.” (From Drive by Daniel Pink, p 91)

8.  Goldilocks tasks: The sweet spot where tasks are neither too easy nor too hard. (From Drive by Daniel Pink, p 224)

8.  rewards and punishments = carrots and sticks.

It is suggested that, in the end, human beings aren’t much different form livestock–that the way to get us moving in the right direction is by dangling a crunchier carrot or wielding a sharper stick. (From Drive, by Daniel Pink, p 18)

 

Filed Under: clever ways to get ideas across, communication, metaphor

Clever personification to communicate difficult concepts

June 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

1. Personifying mood states.

 

Elizabeth Gilbert cleverly communicates her personal experience of loneliness and depression in her memoir Eat Pray Love by portraying the mood states as two guys she calls Loneliness and Depression, giving each his own strong, distinctive personality. Her decision to explain her feelings of loneliness and depression this way obviously has struck a chord with  her readers as this passage has been frequently mentioned as a favourite on various web blogs.

Here it is:

“Depression and Loneliness track me down after about ten days in Italy. I am walking through the Villa Borghese one evening after a happy day spent in school, and the sun is setting gold over St. Peter’s Basilica. I am feeling contented in this romantic scene, even if I am all by myself, while everyone else in the park is either fondling a lover or playing with a laughing child. But I stop to lean against a balustrade and watch the sunset, and I get to thinking a little too much, and then my thinking turns to brooding, and that’s when they catch up with me.

They come upon me all silent and menacing like Pinkerton Detectives, and they flank me – Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don’t need to show me their badges. I know these guys very well. We’ve been playing a cat-and-mouse game for years now. Though I admit that I am surprised to meet them in this elegant Italian garden at dusk. This is no place they belong.

I say to them, “how did you find me here? Who told you I had come to Rome?”

Depression, always the wise guy, says, “what – you’re not happy to see us?“

Go away”, I tell him.

Loneliness, the more sensitive cop, says “I’m sorry, ma’am. But I might have to tail you the whole time you’re traveling. It’s my assignment.”

“I’d really rather you didn’t,” I tell him, and he shrugs almost apologetically, but only moves closer.

Then they frisk me. They empty my pockets of any joy I had been carrying there. Depression even confiscates my identity; but he always does that. Then Loneliness starts interrogating me, which I dread because it always goes on for hours. He’s polite but relentless, and he always trips me up eventually. He asks if I have any reason to be happy that I know of. He asks why I am all by myself tonight, yet again. He asks (though we’ve been through this line of questioning hundreds of times already) why I can’t keep a relationship going, why I ruined my marriage, why I messed things up with David, why I messed things up with every man I’ve ever been with. He asks me where I was the night I turned thirty, and why things have gone so sour since then. He asks why I can’t get my act together, and why I’m not at home living in a nice house and raising nice children like any respectable woman my age should be. He asks why, exactly, I think I deserve a vacation in Rome when I’ve made such a rubble of my life. He asks me why I think that running away to Italy like a college kid will make me happy. He asks where I think I’ll end up in my old age, if I keep living this way.

I walk back home, hoping to shake them, but they keep following me, these two goons. Depression has a firm hand on my shoulder and Loneliness harangues me with his interrogation. I don’t even bother eating dinner; I don’t want them watching me. I don’t want to let them up the stairs to my apartment, either, but I know Depression, and he’s got a billy club, so there’s no stopping him from coming in if he decides that’s what he wants to.

“It’s not fair for you to come here,” I tell Depression. “I paid you off already. I served my time back in New York.”

But he just gives me that dark smile, settles into my favorite chair, puts his feet on my table and lights a cigar, filling the place with his awful smoke. Loneliness watches and sighs, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over himself, fully dressed, shoes and all. He’s going to make me sleep with him again tonight, I just know it.”

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert (p 46-47)

Depression also has been personified in Billie Holiday’s classic song Good Morning Heartache. Read the lyrics as you listen to Billie Holiday sing the song in this video:

YouTube Preview Image

 

Filed Under: clever ways to get ideas across, communication, personification

How do I go about being a writer? I want to write, but I’m not sure how to go about it and whether I’m good enough.

June 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

 

 

Answer (1):  Read Elizabeth Gilbert’s essay Some Thoughts on Writing.


Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the multi-millon-copy best seller Eat Pray Love. 

In her essay, Some Thoughts on Writing, she gives wise and inspiring advice to all aspiring writers ( and would-be-creators of anything fine and beautiful):

 

Elizabeth Gilbert

SOME THOUGHTS ON WRITING

Sometimes people ask me for help or suggestions about how to write, or how to get published. Keeping in mind that this is all very ephemeral and personal, I will try to explain here everything that I believe about writing. I hope it is useful. It’s all I know.

I believe that – if you are serious about a life of writing, or indeed about any creative form of expression – that you should take on this work like a holy calling. I became a writer the way other people become monks or nuns. I made a vow to writing, very young. I became Bride-of-Writing. I was writing’s most devotional handmaiden. I built my entire life around writing. I didn’t know how else to do this. I didn’t know anyone who had ever become a writer. I had no, as they say, connections. I had no clues. I just began.Click here to read the whole essay.

Answer (2): Watch Elizabeth Gilbert’s 19-minute TED video: A new way to think about creativity.  

“Eat, Pray, Love” Author Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.”

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Filed Under: communication, conquering the fear of writing

How to write scientific papers and books well

June 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment

1. Write like Elliot Aronson.

Elliot Aronson is one of our most influential social psychologists, and the only person in the 120-year history of the American Psychological Association to win all three of its major awards for distinguished research, distinguished teaching, and distinguished writing. 

In the 30-minute video below, move the time cursor to 19 ‘ 30″ to catch the 10 minutes Aronson talks about how he wrote his journal articles and books on social psychology.  What a wise and lovely  guy he is!

Filed Under: communication, scientific writing, writing
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