Wishing everyone a joyous holidays and Happy New Year!
Monthly Archives: December 2012
Six Lessons to Live By
1. Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you and move out of their way.
If you feel like you know everything, you’re wrong. I know what I don’t know and then I find partners who can teach me. A perfect example is my partnership with Patrick Whitesell, my co-CEO at WME. While we take on different roles at the company and focus on different things, we share the same goals and at the end of the day, we’re working toward the same end. That’s been the key to our success.
More here:
Looking to Engage an Audience? Tell a Story…using Levers
Daniel Goleman shares some insight on storytelling using different levers depending on your audience. For those of in the communications and litigation worlds, the use of the redescription lever is the most notable and something that we should implement everyday, whether we are talking with our clients, jurors, judges or bosses. While implementing this lever, be wary of what Goleman calls resistances, as I have clients spend countless hours developing presentations, only to fall flat on delivery, because they didn’t wholly consider their audience’s needs.
Enjoy!
Levers of storytelling
One of the ways in which innovative stories seem crucial is when a business is changing direction. Or when you need to mobilize people when things go wrong. Or when you need to reinvigorate a team due to low morale. Which begs the question: What are the kinds of levers that a leader can use to create an effective storytelling strategy to move people in the right direction?
First, it depends on who you are dealing with…
More here:
http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121206172801-117825785-strategic-storytelling?trk=eml-mktg-condig-118-p1
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Daniel Goleman
Co-Director of Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations
Mimicking Can Make You a Better Communicator
We like people more when they mimic us. But only up to a point. If mimicry becomes too obvious, it can backfire, becoming mockery. A new study asks just how much imitation is enough to trigger benefits. Does the mimicker need to copy every action, or merely to move the same body parts?
Peggy Sparenberg and her colleagues conducted three experiments in all. In the first two, 126 participants performed movements while at the same time watching videos of human-like avatars performing various movements of their own here:
http://bps-research-digest.blogspot.com/2012/12/for-mimicry-to-flatter-its-all-about.html
The Secret to Communicating More Effectively….
“In the right key one can say anything. In the wrong key, nothing: the only delicate part is the establishment of the key.”
—George Bernard Shaw
By Tony Robbins
One of the best ways to become aware of the astonishing diversity of human reactions is to speak to a group of people. You can’t help noticing how differently people react to the same thing. You tell a motivational story, and one person will be transfixed, another bored to tears. You tell a joke, and one person howls while another doesn’t move a muscle. You’d think each person was listening in a different mental language.
The question is, why do people react so differently to identical messages? Why does one person see the glass as half-empty and another see it as half-full? Why does one person hear a message and feel energized, excited and motivated while another heads the exact same message and doesn’t respond at all?
Want to be a More Likeable, Persuasive and Effective Communicator? Science says, Use Humor…
– November 28, 2012
Did you hear the one about the priest, the rabbi and the trial consultant? Just kidding. I believe it was Winston Churchill who said: “Humor is a very serious thing.” The very nature of humor is that it is misunderstood more often than not. This makes humor a proverbial two edged sword – it can slice through the toughest of situations to your advantage, or cut sharply against you. This goes for the courtroom experience as well.
Research shows that successful humor boosts both likeability and group effectiveness. According to Michelle Gielan, an expert in positive psychology and cofounder of the Institute for Applied Positive Research, when something makes us smile or laugh, the feel-good chemical dopamine is dropped into our systems, which turns on all the learning centers in the brain and heightens creativity, productivity and engagement.
Read more here:
15 Phrases That Build Bridges Between People
On Monday we talked about how important body language is in delivering your message, but we must not forget that what we are saying is just as important as how we are saying it.
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Business is changing. The experts sure seem to think so. Every day, some new article hypes a brave new world of egalitarian openness and collaboration. That might be true if you work for yourself. For the rest of us, it’s still a winner-take-all, command-and-control world. Always has been, always will be. The experts may own the language, but not reality. When leaders feel threatened or the ink runs red, they rarely tap into their talent for solutions. More often, they cut communication and withdraw behind closed doors. Corporate culture can overcome many hurdles, but never human nature.
1) Thank You: Common courtesy? Sure. But tell me this: When was the last time you forgot (or rejected) gratitude? Whether given in private or public, a sincere ‘thanks’ creates goodwill. Don’t forget your mother’s advice: “Say please.” People are always happier doing a favor than taking an order.
More here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffschmitt/2012/12/03/15-phrases-that-build-bridges-between-people/
By Jeff Schmitt
When Communicating, Watch Your Body Language, It Tells More Than You Think
If you think that you can judge by examining someone’s facial expressions if he has just hit the jackpot in the lottery or lost everything in the stock market — think again. Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at New York University and Princeton University have discovered that, it just doesn’t work that way.
Rather, they found that body language provides a better cue in trying to judge whether an observed subject has undergone strong positive or negative experiences.
In a study published this week in the journal Science, the researchers present data showing…
http://www.huji.ac.il/cgi-bin/dovrut/dovrut_search_eng.pl?mesge135584551205872560
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This is extremely interesting data, since it flies directly in the face of everything we have been previously taught. Nevertheless, if you want to be an effective and persuasive communicator, you need to pay attention to all facets of your presentation; and this means your body as well.
So, remember, when giving presentations, be sure you know the message you’re conveying non-verbally as well. A great way to address this is practice in front of a mirror, a friend or videotape. I find video taping to be the best medium and achieve the most accurate results, because as they say in show business, the tape never lies….
-David W. Mykel
TheArtofTrialSciences 