Editor's Note: This is a guest post by our partners, BrillianceInc
Dr. Jekyll
Most of us like to think we’re good people and that, if put in an unethical or dangerous situation, we’d do the right, noble thing. We claim assuredly that if given power, we’d wield it fairly; or that we’d call the police if we saw someone getting abused.
Perhaps.
But study after troubling study shows that the majority of us, when put in certain difficult circumstances, would act in ways we’d later be ashamed of. The truth is, while on the fringes of society we can talk about saints and sociopaths, we are all capable of good and evil.
Mr. Hyde
I had the pleasure of listening to Philip Zimbardo at a recent Neuroleadership Conference. Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about good and evil. While you may not recognize his name, you’re probably familiar with his infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment where normal, healthy people cast as guards became sadistic authoritarians, while those cast as prisoners became hopeless and traumatized. The 2-week simulation experiment was cut short after just 6 days.
People aren’t born heroes. Our brains run on a 100,000-year-old operating that errs on the side of self-protection and suspicion. Scientists literally refer to it as negativity bias. Put in a threatening situation, our brain makes saving ourselves top priority.
While it may not be our default nature to act in others’ best interest, we can retrain ourselves. We can build a heroic brain and become the person we’d like to be — the person we claim to be. And when we act heroically, we improve our home environment, work environment, and communities. In essence, we improve the lives of everyone we touch, including our own.
Here are some essential hero-building steps:
Building Heroic Muscles
1. First: acknowledge your fallibility. Ignoring our dark self self doesn’t make it go away. It just hides until one day in a weak moment it inconveniently emerges (like Mel Gibson getting caught in a drunken, racist rant, or a sanctimonious AWOL politician found Tango-ing with his mistress in Argentina). It doesn’t do us any good to label deeds, thoughts, or people as evil. Rather, know that any person is capable of making bad choices that can create horrible irreversible ripples.
2. Second, notice your ripple. Done anything you’re not proud of? Maybe you raised your voice at your child, or rolled your eyes in a meeting. Or maybe you just forgot to thank someone for their efforts. Stop shaming yourself (or making excuses) and get to work by first apologizing, and then doing better.
3. Third: start practicing small acts of kindness. You become what you practice. Put a Tibetan monk in an MRI, and you’ll see a brain that’s trained to tilt heavily toward compassion and kindness. But you don’t have to meditate to re-train your brain. And you don’t have to be anyone special to be a hero. We often think of heroes as extraordinary people doing big things. But, as Zimbardo explains, heroes are ordinary people acting selflessly to protect or improve the lives of others. Heroes take positive action, where others stand by and justify their inaction.
Here are some small actions that can go a long way toward improving others’ lives:
- Listen to someone without judgment.
- Compliment someone you care about (without expecting anything in return).
- Compliment a stranger (without expecting anything in return).
- Ask the cashier how her day is going…then listen.
- Give your change to someone in need.
- Talk to the shy person at the holiday party.
- When talk about someone turns negative, instead of piling on, say something kind.
- Stop and give a confused tourist directions.
- Listen to your partner, your child, your mother –anyone you think you know well — with genuine curiosity and wonder.
- Instead of getting angry or blaming someone at work when something fails, assume good intent, pick up the phone or walk over to them, and seek to understand their point of view.
- If you like to talk, keep your views to yourself in your next meeting and ask others for their opinions. Then listen without interrupting.
- Thank someone.
- Apologize.
- Forgive someone you’ve held a grudge against.
- Forgive yourself.
- Admit your mistakes.
- Acknowledge your weaknesses.
- For every holiday gift you purchase, add a small (or big) donation to a trusted charity like Oxfam who will make the most of your gift so that it improves lives.
Ta-Da, Brilliance!
More on Flex Your Do-Gooder Muscles
Zach Wahls, a 19-year-old University of Iowa student spoke about the strength of his family during a public forum on House Joint Resolution 6 in the Iowa House of Representatives. Wahls has two mothers, and came to oppose House Joint Resolution 6 which would end civil unions in Iowa.
Once a quarter The Henderson Group holds "By Invitation Only" workshops in San Francisco, led by our VP of Services, Terry Gault. Upcoming Dates:
Executive Communicator
Dec. 8 – 9, 2011 in San Francisco
Jan. 26 – 27, 2012 in San Mateo
Participants learn:
Executive Presence – How To:
- Make the right first impression
- Empathize with functional executives according to their diverse business drivers
- Establish rapport with superiors and their superiors
Executive Communication – How To:
- Assess group dynamics quickly and cultivate support
- Modify dialog style according to each executive
- Anticipate and navigate around “political landmines”
- ”Think on your feet”and handle probing questions and objections effectively
Executive Presentation – How To:
- Prepare effectively by holding the “meeting before the meeting”
- Open and close presentations with impact
- Deliver the right amount of detail without getting bogged down
- Maintain the engagement of a busy executive audience
- Use metaphor to make complex concepts easy to understand
- Avoid presentation pitfalls and “career limiting moves”
- Influence executive decisions to drive desired business outcomes
"This course exceeded my expectations, and I found several elements of extreme value. The most beneficial aspect was the quadruple-barrel feedback circle — self-assessment, peer assessment, executive assessment and presentation expert assessment. I also compliment the feedback quality of the instructors. The powerful combination of the executives, and communicator expert cannot be overstated. Further, the video provides an immensely rich and relevant tool for participants to tie it all together. I thought this was fantastic."
Joe Hasselwander, Senior Digital Marketing Professional
Register for Executive Communicator
Art of Presentation
Feb. 2 – 3, 2012 in San Francisco
The results of this work:
- Competently present ideas and information to groups of people
- Energize and persuade audiences using stories and metaphors
- Effectively communicate with peers, superiors and customers
- Move business objectives forward by quickly engaging with customers and colleagues and creating influence.
Specific Skills Mastered:
- Using voice, gesture, movement, presentation structure, stories and metaphor for powerful presentations
- Helping audiences learn through use of examples, associations and images
- Turning fear into excitement through creative visualization
- Structuring presentations for maximum impact
- Engaging listeners and increasing audience attention span.
“After one session with The Henderson Group, I immediately rolled out their work throughout the EMC Sales Organization.”
National VP of Productivity, EMC Corporation
Register for Art of Presentation
by Terry Gault
It's the nightmare scenario for many people. You are on the spot – speaking in front of an important audience: peers, executives or high-powered customers. Your mind goes blank. You hear deafening silence as audience members look away in embarrassment. You stammer out a soul-crushing apology, "Sorry. I lost my place" as you madly fumble through the gibberish notes you thought might save you in such an eventuality.
Rick Perry demonstrated it on a big stage – national television. And, of course, every major news outlet jumped on the story.
This blog post offers a process you can use in moments like these when you go blank or something goes awry: your phone rings during your own presentation, the wrong slide pops up, the projector suddenly gives you the Blue Screen of Death, etc. These have all happened to me, by the way. In those moments, it's easy to descend into the hell of panic and paranoia. But it's not the only choice and it's certainly the least effective.
To Perry's credit, once he realized that he was not going to be able to remember, his facial expression seemed pretty relaxed. He smiled at himself and said, "Oops" with obvious good humor.
Another piece of advice that can prevent or mitigate these moments is to type up your notes in an outline fashion with major points, not a "word for word" script. Keep your notes handy and use 14 pitch or larger font so that you can easily read them.
Situate the notes near a glass or bottle of water. If you do go blank, simply:
1) Pick up the water, glancing at your notes as you do so.
2) Drink the water, as you gather your thoughts and refocus your energy.
3) Set down the water, glancing once more at your notes, if needed.
4) Carry on as if the entire act of drinking was carefully planned and choreographed from the get go.
In 99% of cases, the audience will be none the wiser and you will feel victorious for successfully and gracefully dealing with a real nightmare scenario.
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. — Rick Perry says he "stepped in it" when he couldn't remember the third federal department he would abolish if elected, but insisted the debate blunder wouldn't force him out of the Republican presidential field.
"Oh, shoot, no," Perry told The Associated Press on Thursday morning, the day after making the error during a GOP debate. Asked whether his campaign, which is struggling to regain traction, could survive, Perry replied: "This ain't a day for quitting nothing."
Perry on Letterman – Top Ten Excuses
photo credit: eschipul
We now live in a world where information is potentially unlimited. Information is cheap, but meaning is expensive. Where is the meaning? Only human beings can tell you where it is. We're extracting meaning from our minds and our own lives. -George Dyson
Great article on Information Graphics in Context and the visual vocabulary of storytelling from The Atlantic!
photo credit: vancouverfilmschool
Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers …
I want to share this terrific video, and my "why".
When clients learn that I have a background in the theater and entertainment industry, they sometimes ask, "Do you miss it?"
It's a bit complicated but essentially, the answer is No.
Over 73% of SAG members had earnings of less than $5,000 a year.One-quarter of the members earned between $1 and $1,000.30% of the membership had no earnings at all.Only 12% of SAG members earned more than $20,000.
If I set aside the question of remuneration, what I consider is what I value about the two different experiences.
But when I lead a workshop and I see clients experiencing new found confidence, capability, freedom and power, the impact of the work is quite palpable. It's clear that I have made a difference in the lives of my clients.
That is why I do this work. I suspect that is much the same for my partners in this business.
by Terry Gault
The title alone grabbed my attention. When I saw the clip and learned it was directed by Martin Scorcese, I was determined to see this movie.
Enjoy the trailers!
Editor's Note: This is a guest post by our partners, BrillianceInc.
Cracks in the Foundation
My house in Oakland was built in 1924 on a steep downward slope. When someone would ask if my house had a bolted foundation, I’d say something like “Oh, I’m sure it must” and would change the subject. I liked to assume that, since a lot of renovations had taken place before we moved in, someone must have fixed it. The fact that someone had actually sealed off any access to the foundation made it easier for me to ignore it: can’t assess what you can’t see.
For a while, this avoidance strategy saved me money. Then, a crack in the foundation revealed itself. And over the course of a year, with a few minor earthquakes, and good ol’ gravity, the crack grew. It grew until one day, I decided to pull my head out of the sand and bring in an expert to tell me what I had.
Expert Deniers
We humans are really good at ignoring cracks in all sorts of foundations: the body that we keep pushing until we suffer a debilitating injury or illness; the resentment that we allow to fester until the relationship is beyond repair; the key employee that we ignore until they quit and sign up with the competition; the waistline that grows until we can’t button our skinny pants…then our fat pants.
The laundry…
Just in Time
The General Contractor told me that, while half of my house had a new bolted foundation, the other half was sitting (and sliding) on an original slab.
The work to replace the foundation took just 13 days. Five days after completion, we had an earthquake and aftershock with an epicenter less than 10 miles away. We were jolted but the house didn’t suffer a single crack.
Sure, I would have liked to have spent the money elsewhere, but the feeling of strength, stability, and security I gained was worth it.
Facing the Truth
Pulling your head out of the sand and shining light on the thing that scares you takes courage. And once you do, you can begin to take steps to repair. Until then, you are powerless to improve your situation, and you continue to skid in the wrong direction.
Questions for Reflection
1. What problems am I ignoring in my:
- Health
- Relationships
- Reputation
- Happiness
- Finances
- Career
2. What’s the story I tell myself that helps me ignore the truth?
3. What will happen in 6 months if I change nothing?
4. What’s most vital that I change?
5. What’s the most potent first step I can take toward improving it?
6. Whose help do I want to enlist to support me?*
* Don’t even think of going it alone. Find a friend, coach, mental or physical health practitioner, or a class to support you as you begin to change the goblin before it becomes unruly.
photo credit: paparutzi
11 Million Views and Counting…
With the unfortunate passing of Steve Jobs last week, most people immediately think of his companies (Apple, Next, Pixar) and product innovations (Mac, iPod/ iTunes, iPhone, iPad) as his greatest contributions to modern society. However, his passing has brought even more attention to one of his most famous public appearances. In 2005, Steve Jobs spoke at Stanford University’s commencement ceremony and delivered an inspiring and memorable speech. In less than 15 minutes, the speech conveys a lot of wisdom and was particularly relevant to the audience of young people just starting their professional careers. He advised on important decisions about character, priorities, relationships, and more.
There’s no simple scientific formula that would enable someone to replicate exactly what Steve Jobs did in those 15 minutes. That said, Steve makes very effective use of some high-impact communication techniques that you can leverage to advance your career by improving your speeches, presentations, and even one-on-one communication.
“Hook” Your Audience
More often than not, people start presentations with something soft, bland, and procedural. “I’m Mike Johnson, Vice President of Channels, and for the next 20 minutes I’m going to talk to you about our 2012 Channel Strategy.” Yawn. These kinds of intros often feel necessary to speakers, but they don’t immediately engage your audience. And keep in mind, your audience is probably used to video-on-demand on airplanes, DVRs, and internet content that lets them switch, in only seconds, from boring content to engaging content. If you don’t engage them from the outset, while they may physically remain in the room, their minds will be “surfing” to other places.
A hook is a communication technique designed to engage the audience, and it can take the form of a personal story, a controversial statement, a quote, or a question to the audience. Steve Jobs spends one sentence to say “Thank you I’m honored to be with you,” and then goes immediately into a hook to engage the audience. “Truth be told, I never graduated from college.” What a great way to get people’s attention at a college commencement speech!
People Remember Stories
At 00:50, Steve explains that he’s going to tell 3 stories, which highlights another powerful communication technique: storytelling. Stories are memorable, so if you want people to recall key points in your presentation, use stories.
Steve also uses a couple of techniques that help increase the impact and richness of his stories. First, he shows vulnerability. Anyone who’s been in high-tech for a few years has heard people tell self-aggrandizing stories about their unbridled success. As an audience, when we hear those kinds of stories we tend to see the speaker as egotistical and phony. Why? Because we’re all human and we all have weaknesses. And most importantly, those stories don’t really engage the audience.
By contrast, Steve Jobs, one of the most spectacularly successful and innovative people of our time, describes how he was given up for adoption as a child, and passed on by a couple who decided that they wanted to adopt a girl. This vulnerability helps us relate to him and draws us in. Later on, he also describes why he got fired by Apple’s Board and how that was the best thing that could have happened to him.
He also uses first person dialog, meaning that he uses specific direct quotes rather than simply characterizing what was said. At 1:45, he describes how the hospital called his parents-to-be and said “We’ve got an unexpected baby boy. Do you want him?” While the linguistic difference is subtle, the impact is much stronger than if he had said “The hospital called, said they had an unexpected baby boy, and asked if my parents wanted him.” Use first person dialog to make your stories more vivid.
Perils of the Podium
He may not have had a choice in whether or not to use a podium. In general, in our speaking engagements, we avoid podiums when possible because they tend to restrict and limit you as a speaker. Not only do they create additional physical separation from the audience, they tend to dampen hand gestures, restrict physical movement, and lessen eye contact with the audience. You can see this in Steve Jobs’s speech – he uses very few hand gestures, never leaves the podium, and has to deliberately force himself to look up periodically to re-establish eye contact with the audience. Granted, some of this naturally flows from the fact that he’s reading prepared remarks, but in general, we’d recommend that you either avoid podiums when possible, or be conscious of their limitations and try to compensate in other ways.
Authenticity
More than technique, what makes a great speaker and a great presentation is authenticity, meaning “true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character.” Get comfortable being yourself when you communicate. People dislike and distrust fakers, posers, and phonies. In politics, you hear candidates’ authenticity evaluated when people use phrases like “comfortable in his own skin.”
Steve Jobs comes across as extremely real in the commencement speech – not as a game-show host, not as a master thespian, not even as the all-powerful founder and CEO of Apple and certainly not as a phony. One great example is at 4:00 when he talks about his love for typography and says “It was beautiful…historical…artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.” You can feel his passion and curiosity, and it helps you understand him as a person. You feel like you know him, and that the person up there in front of the crowd is the same person he’d be if you met him for coffee.
Metaphor
Metaphor is a powerful tool that can both increase your audience’s understanding of your point and enhance the dynamism of your content. Steve uses metaphor multiple times during the speech, like at 7:20 when, in talking about being fired from Apple, he says “The heaviness of success was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner.” You can almost feel the weight of Jobs’ success at Apple, and the airy freedom when he started over. At 8:15, when he says “Sometimes, life is going to hit you in the head with a brick,” you feel a sense of suddenness, surprise, violence, and pain. It’s compelling and memorable, and that’s why you should thoughtfully use metaphor in your communications including metaphorical language and metaphorical images in your presentation slides.
Bring it Home
Just like the weak and boring openings described above, we’ve all seen (and probably delivered) regrettable closes to otherwise decent presentations: “Well, that’s my last slide,” “I’m just about out of time but I can take a couple of questions,” etc. These kinds of closes aren’t memorable, don’t reinforce your point, and don’t maintain the engagement of your audience. For his closing hook at 14:28, Steve uses a pithy quote, “Stay hungry. Stay foolish.” to put a memorable and inspiring finish on his remarks that reinforces the messages of his three stories.
Steve Jobs was a unique and incredible person whose legacy includes fundamental transformations of major industries including consumer electronics, personal computing, music publishing, movie production, and more. While there will probably never be another Steve Jobs, we can all take advantage of the techniques he used in one of the most memorable and widely-viewed speeches of his career.
photo credit: Keng Susumpow
