What needs to be done to minimize misunderstanding in communication (and thereby avoid being dragged off by homeland security)?

What needs to be done to minimize misunderstanding in communication (and thereby avoid being dragged off by homeland security)?

I'm sitting here in the Newark airport waiting for a connection to
Houston. Going through the security is always a big ball of joy. This
time was no different, except for one little transgression with the
guy ahead of me in the queue.

Security asked him a few questions pertaining to his bag. With each
question the guy got more perturbed. I think it was question number
four that sent him into ballistic mode.

I won't go into the details of security rushing the guy and dragging
him off, which gladly brought a break from the monotony of standing in
line. What I will get into is the general and abstract nature of
language. If the communication between security and ballistic-man had
been clear, concise and concrete, I believe things could have ended
more civilly.

In social exchanges, conversations tend to be organic. That is, social
conversations can lead in any direction. There is no specific outcome
that is trying to be achieved. This does not apply to professional
conversations (or to airport security checks post-911). Conversations
in professional settings have specific outcomes.

Perhaps the purpose is to give corrective/supportive feedback or to
negotiate a deal. Maybe it is to handle negative conflict and to
encourage constructive conflict. It might to run an effective group
meeting or a one2one where there needs to be a rhyme and reason to the gathering.

Whatever the nature of the professional dialogue the underlying skill
needed is the ability to move language from being abstract and general
to being concrete and specific. The more of the latter you can
communicate, the less of a chance there will be for misunderstanding
or miscommunicaton.

Corporations invest time, money and energy to build clear
organizational lines, functional tools and useful technology and so
on. Nonetheless, there is the constant challenge of poor communication
between people.

A majority of problems simply comes from having different
interpretations of what is communicated. What needs to be invested
alongside the above mentioned, is to teach people to be crystal
clear in their message. From my experience, if a team, a department,
or a company does this there huge gains to be reaped.
  
This is not a light-switch solution. That is, flick the switch and everything is honky-dory. Rather it is a process that requires constant vigilance to being as specific and concrete as possible.

Hopefully, I'll learn from my own words and won't be the next guy who
is tackled and dragged off to the dark recesses of airport security.

Cordially
Jason W Birkevold Liem
phone: (+47) 957 66 460
email: MINDtalk@email.com
web: www.MINDtalk.no
blog: www.jasonliem.blogspot.com
twitter: www.twitter.com/mindtalkcoach

Should President Obama receive the Nobel Peace Prize?

I find myself sitting in a cafe in downtown Oslo only a stone's throw
distance where President Obama will receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
I'm waiting on a friend to move on to grab a bit to eat and then we
will plunge into the pulsating night.

It will be in mid December when Obama graces the Viking city of the
Norsemen. I have a problem with that. If it was October 23rd 2010,
there would be no problem. The fact is that it is 2009.
Let me elaborate. The Nobel Peace Prize is given to those who
accomplish three requirements set out my Alfred Nobel.

Unfortunately, Obama does not meet these requirements. The guy has
accomplished much in 10 months, more than most presidents do in their
entire term. Regardless, he has not met the requirements to receive
the honour of the Nobel. It clearly states that the prize should go to whoever "shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses".

No fault lies with Obama. None at all. It lies completely on the
shoulders of the Nobel Institute in Oslo. What real choice did Obama
actually have? It must be very difficult, if not close to impossible,
to turn down such a prize. It's not like finding the prize at the
bottom of a Cracker Jack box.

Obama was put into a very awkward position and he made the best of that
situation. As I understand it, the Nobel is given in recognition of having done something. The operative word is 'done' and in the past tense. It is based on having established a brilliant track record of pushing humanity in a positive, forward direction.

There is so many other people who deserved the recognition this year.
So many other organizations or causes who could have done so much
with the publicity and the financial rewards that come with the prize.

Ok....I'll get off my soap box.  I just had the need to vent.

Cordially
Jason W Birkevold Liem
phone: (+47) 957 66 460
email: MINDtalk@email.com
web: www.MINDtalk.no
blog: www.jasonliem.blogspot.com
twitter: www.twitter.com/mindtalkcoach

What are some effective approaches in dealing with stress?

What are some effective approaches in dealing with stress?

Stress is completely an internal phenomenon. As far and wide a person
wishes to search the external world, he will never find stress. He
will able to find stressors, the triggers of stress. This he can do
with out expending too much effort, but he'll never find stress.

The important question is how to deal with this slow-killer? The
strategies I write about here are not quick fixes. They are common
sense that requires a person to take responsibility and action.

The first it to take care of the machine and the machine will take
care of you. The answer is not rocket science. Train well. Eat well.
Live well.

Stress triggers the release of stress hormones such as adrenaline.
Long after the stress situation may have disappaited, the adrenaline
hasn't. It's still swimming around in the blood stream straining and
wearing internal systems.

Working up a good sweat and oxyginating the body is the best way to
rid yourself of stress hormones. I personally find running 7 to 8
clicks, 3 to 4-times a week does my body and brain good.

Running might not be your thing. If you want to deal with your stress,
I highly recommend finding your 'thing' and do it. Love what you do
and it'll pay off big time.

The next thing is what you ingest nutirition-wise. Fresh vegetables
and fruit. Fish and cereals. Red wine and dark choclates. It's really
quite straight forward. Calories in and calories burned. Simply put,
it's about the numbers.

Ok. I agree this may be a little too black and white. But to be quite
frank, there is not a lot of gray between the two.

The next strategy is to catch enough Zs. Sleep is so important. This
is a chance for mind and body to download and recharge.

How well does your cell or Mac work if it is not charged? The same
logic can be applied to your bio-machine. The body only needs three
hours, but the mind needs between 7 to 8 to be fully functional.
Again, it's all about mathematics.

In the next post, I will continue with the next two strategies, which
require a little more work. The first is your self-talk. The second is
how you personally define what is important.

Cordially

Jason W Birkevold Liem
phone: (+47) 957 66 460
email: MINDtalk@email.com
web: www.MINDtalk.no
blog: www.jasonliem.blogspot.com
twitter: www.twitter.com/mindtalkcoach

Twitter & Coaching - Part II

Twitter is simply a brilliant tool.  It allows me to connect in real-time with the community that I'm tapped into.  As of this moment, I'm directly connected to 309 people who contribute with tweets that I find absorbing and relevant to my interests.

One of my goals was to build a community of Tweeters that had similar interests to me (some of those interests I stated in my previous post).  I've kept to this decision from day-one.  Perhaps if I was not so choosy I might have had double the amount of followers as I do today, but that would have meant I accepted everybody.

Unfortunately, Twitter is no different from the rest of the internet.  It, too, is filled with a lot of useless static and distractions.  I felt if I wanted Twitter to be interesting, fun and practical I needed to be selective.  Like most things I've found in life, quality of community takes time to build.  You need to invest time and contribute effort to get a decent ROI.

This is a great site to learn more about the 'hows' of Twitter and tweeting. http://www.ehow.com/how_4670029_tweet-twitter.html

Twitter and Coaching - Part 1

It was about 18 months ago when I really began to pay any attention to Twitter. At first, I thought it was just the flavour of the month and it would be replaced by the next cool tool. The reason I believed this is when I jumped on and saw that people were tweeting about mundane things they were doing at that moment. I decided to jump offthe tweet train and look for other social media outlets to get my fix.

It was about eight months ago that I was reading an interesting blog called Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel ( http://www.twistimage.com/blog/ ) where Twitter flashed up in my mental radar again. I sighed in exasperation remembering my last encounter with Twitter.

Although I managed to expel every hint of oxygen in the world's
longest sigh, I continued to read the blog. Somewhere in the middle of
the entry, Joel referred to Tweeting as micro-blogging. Bing!, went
the mental blip on my radar.

I know this connection of Tweeter and micro-blogging is a given for 
everybody else on the Planet of Social Media, but for me I honestly
never connected the dots. It was a mind- blowing revelation.
(Reader, please allow room for a little exaggeration).

After finishing reading the post, I immediately jumped back on to
Twitter and opened my shiny new account - @MINDtalkCoach. I got
back on the Tweeter train again to give it a second chance. I was not
disapointed this time around.  The train ride has been, and still is, fun.

What I discovered was relevant, stimulating, intriguing content. It was not some guy telling me he was sitting on the can or someone else who was cleaning their cat's fur ball off the new carpet. Instead, there was a whole community out there with similar interests about coaching, communication, psychology, business, social media, entrepreneurship and tonnes of geek-stuff.

I praised the social media Gods for my enlightenment, and as of six
months ago I've been using Tweeter to my advantage. I'll get more I to
those advantages in my next post.

For now, if you are in the knowledge industry and you've been thinking more about the different roads of social media, don't ponder too long about Twitter.  Join and reap the benefits of the network you will build.

Cordially
Jason W Birkevold Liem
phone: (+47) 957 66 460
email: MINDtalk@email.com
web: www.MINDtalk.no
blog: www.jasonliem.blogspot.com
twitter: www.twitter.com/mindtalkcoach

Look forward. There is no turning back.

I went to the Paleontology museum with my son today.  Everywhere we turned there were the massive skeletal remains of dinosaurs.  Even though these enourmous structures of biology stood in front of me, it was still hard to wrap my head around the fact that these animals walked the same Earth millions of years ago.

Of course, I had seen dinosaur exhibits before, but today I was just as awe-struck as if it was the first time.  I watched my little boy run from one dinosaur to the next with all the excitement bursting out of his body.  "Look papa look!"  "See how big that one is?"  "I have that one at home!" (referring to his little plastic toys).

Sitting here this evening pondering what I want to blog about, I find that dinosaurs are rumbling through my head.  As I think about dinosaurs my mind is jumping to the past, and as the mind is with associations, I am thinking about my past.

I have had 40 years of experiences that have shaped the man I am today.  Most of those experiences have been brilliant.  I also have a collection of experiences I've gained by graduating from the school of hard knocks.  I've been knocked down, thrown about and gutted by some of these experiences.  Although they wounded me, they have also shaped me, strengthened me and made me appreciate what I have and who I am.

When coaching or counseling clients (depending on the skill-set needed for that session), I find it crucial to get the client to keep her head up and looking toward the horizon.  It is so easy, especially when we are stressed and strained, for us to look down.  We get lost in the noise of the moment and the dust that is kicked up by a problem.

When the mind is troubled with a problem or stressed with a situation, it tends to shift into default.  Default for the mind is stewing up negative thoughts.  It seems to want to look for something to worry about even if there is nothing to fret over.

By keeping my client to looking forward, it keeps her attentive on looking for solutions and open doors.  Of course, sometimes a client feels she needs to rummage around in her past.  I personally find that it is best to try to limit this mental exercise.

One way to do this is to ask how a past experience is affecting there life in the here and now.  I want to help them change or modify the beliefs they established in the past and are now hindering them in the present. This approach keeps a client's mind in the present, where they can actually affect change.

There is no need to ask a client to relive an awful or traumatic moment. I truly believe asking someone to dive into their past and dig up old traumas serves no purpose.  They can not change the past.  It is what it is.  The only thing they can change is how that experience and the associated beliefs affects them in the present.

I tell my client, " Look forward.  There is no turning back."

Depression, Stress and Burn-out

This entry is a response to an article that I read in Aftenposten (a Norwegian newspaper) titled Hvorfor blir vi deprimert? (Why are we depressed?) dated 10 October 2009. http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/article3312984.ece

The journalist asked four experts (i.e. a psychologist, a psychiatrist, the Minister of Health and an adviser for mental health) in the area of depression about their thoughts as for the reasons why there is a growing degree of depression in Norway.  The answers given were varied and focused on different areas of society.  The subject of depression is something that can not be fully addressed in a newspaper article, or for that fact, a series of articles.  What it does though, is start a dialogue about an illness that plagues society at many different levels.

I feel the question posed by the article is a fundamental query that needs to be addressed.  There are people who believe that the accumulation of wealth and success brings happiness.  There are others that try to find happiness in mass religion, cults or esoteric gurus.  Then there are other who believe that getting married, having kids and settling down leads to the road to happiness.  There are millions of other ways people chase after happiness.  Some find it, but many more don't.

When a person fails to achieve some sense of happiness or when they do reach a level where they expect to find happiness, they often ask questions such as the following.  "Is this it?  This is what I've been struggling towards? There has got to be more?"

I work as a communication and executive coach in a broad range of industries and across different levels of management.  Depression rears it's ugly head amongst these ranks of working professionals, as it does anywhere else in society.  The severity and the cause of depression, are of course, as varied as are the people affected by it. 

If a person's expectations of what life is suppose to be like does not match with what their life actually is,  it leads people to feel unhappy. If these same people feel that there is nothing they can do to change their life or situation, this leads them to feel a sense of powerless or lack of control. The feeling of depression soon follows.

Realistically, a person has either two choices.  He can either change his life situation (i.e. job, significant other, residence, way of life etc.) or he has to change his expectations of what he believes life is suppose to be (i.e. his map of the world).

One of the best ways I have found to help people deal with their depression is through dialogue. They begin by finding words to describe abstract thoughts and feelings.  A majority of the time, people find it hard to articulate what is specifically on their mind.  They tend to start off using very general terms.  It is through the effort of asking certain types of questions that I help the client to paint a more vivid and vibrant painting of how they see the world.  It not only becomes clearer for me, but becomes, more importantly, clearer for them.

This process of verbally painting a picture reveals, maybe for the first time, the clients' underlying beliefs.  It is his beliefs that determine and define his expectations of how life is suppose to be.   As you know, a belief is simply a person's certainty about someone or something. For example, I am certain that the weather will be nice tomorrow; I am certain that martians are bad; I am certain that I can trust her etc. 

By getting a person to operationally define his beliefs, you discover his rule book.  That is, when someone specifically outlines what has to happen or not happen in order for his rules to be met.

When a person who is depressed clarifies his rules, you generally find his life situation does not come very close to meeting those rules.  Quite often I discover that the chance of meeting those rules is highly unlikely.  It is like setting a goal that you can never achieve.  You are setting yourself up for failure.

The key is to get the the client to redefine the rules or part of the rules by which he defines and lives his life.  The rules need to be realistic, flexible and tailored to his life and situation.  Only then will a person feel that they can affect change.

I've super-simplified the process in this short blog entry as to what I do to help people overcome their depression. For most cases of depression (excluding those due to imbalanced brain chemistry) if you can help a person redefine their rules and expand their constructive vocabulary, you can get them to climb out of their hole of depression and to start moving forward again.

Here are some further sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_%28mood%29
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/depression.html
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/depression/complete-index.shtml

Leading versus Managing: Two Distinct Skill-sets

A topic that comes up time and again is the difference between what is
defined as the role of a manager and what is defined as the role of a
leader. For those who sit outside of the corporate world, it may only
seem to be a trivial game in semantics. For those in the world of
organizations, the distinction between the two is not so trivial.
Many of my clients tend to be excellent managers. They are
knowledgeable and experienced in their fields of expertise. For most
of them it is a straight-forward process when it comes to managing
systems and tasks. Run process A to achieve outcome B.

As most business professional are aware there are two distinct skill-
sets - one for managing and one for leading. It is the latter that a
good majority of my clients have never had any formal training. It has
been a learn-as-you-go process. Time and again they have had to
reinvent the leadership wheel.

I think learning through experience is the fastest learning curve.
Sometimes though, gaining book-knowledge first and then applying it to
the real world can be a smoother road to learning. There may be as
many mistakes made along the way as there is with jumping into the
deep end. Although in this case, you have background theory that can
help to explain what happened.

I find that managers who want to improve their leadership skills don't
need to go hiking into a dense forest of leadership theories. What I
find is that it is tools they crave. Tools that are practical,
concrete and result specific.

From my experience and the feedback I've received from clients over
the years, these tools were, and are, the best way forward for them.
Tools of communication, psychology, delegation, decision-making and so
on.

The tools are simple to learn and are presented in a clear, step-by-
step format. In our coaching sessions, we take a current problem,
discuss it and apply the tool. The coaching session provides a forum
where they can practice, make mistakes, strategize, while building
skill and confidence.

Over time, managers pick up these more of the crucial tools and learn to use
them effectively. At some point, they have a tool box filled with a
collection of leadership tools. Over time, they become increasingly competent at applying them in different situations and circumstances.

Of course, there are always new tools to pick up at the hardware store.

Cordially
Jason W Birkevold Liem
phone: (+47) 957 66 460
email: MINDtalk@email.com
web: www.MINDtalk.no
blog: www.jasonliem.blogspot.com
twitter: www.twitter.com/mindtalkcoach

Focus, Feelings and Patterns of Questions

Focus Triggers Feelings

I want to begin this post with a simple question; in the last 30 minutes what have you, the reader, been focused on? Perhaps it was with a problem with work; great news you just received from a short call; or your kid asking you the same question for the hundredth time with a two-minute period. It could have been any number of things.

What we focus on directly determines what we feel. For example, an individual's manager gives some corrective feedback about taking more time to listen to people's side of an issue during the week's tactical meeting. John feels irritation with the feedback, which feeds into a sense of despise for his manager Kjetil also feels irritation, but it leads him to feel that his manager is trying to support him.

One thing is what we focus on, but what is also important to understand is the meaning we assign to that focus. We may wake up one Monday morning, look outside the bedroom window out onto a gray, cold, dark autumn morning. Some people's mood and motivation will be dampened and down, because of the what that particular mornings weather means to them. Some others will feel uplifted and looking forward to the day, because they reason with themselves that they will be inside the office most of the day engaged in an interesting project and the weather really has no significant relevance.

Learned Patterns

The meaning we assign to what we are focusing on at any particular moment is determined by our language, and more specifically by the questions we ask ourselves. We have a learned-pattern of questions that we ask ourselves time and time again. What do I mean?

Human being are pattern-based creatures. That is, almost everything we do, say, think, and feel in our day-to-day lives are based on learned patterns. We have an experience, we learn from that experience, and if repeated often enough it establishes a pattern (in some cases the event may only have to take place once to establish a learned pattern). For example, a person may as a child have gone up to a dog to pet it. The dog was scared and bit the child's hand. That person develops a pattern to avoid dogs. When her focus fall on a dog, she assigns a meaning that the dog is going to bite, and thus she avoids the dog. This is her pattern when it comes to dogs.

Questions as Learned-Patterns

We have a tendency to ask outselves a fixed pattern of questions depending on what we are focusing on. For simplicity's sake, focus can be categorized into three areas: what we can control; what we can influence; and what we can't control.

If our focus is on the areas of what we can control and influence, then the questions we ask oursevles tend to be constructive and opportunity-seeking in nature. For example, we may ask ourselves some of the following questions:

• What can I learn from this?
• How can I apply this to other areas of my life?
• What can I do with this experience/information?
• What won't I do next time? What will i do next time?
• What do I need more of? What do I need less of?
  
• This situation really blows, but where do I go from here?

These questions will tend to make us feel a number of resourceful feelings like a sense of control, oversight, certainty, growth, opportunity etc.

On the other hand, if our focus tends to be on those situations where have no-control, the questions we tend to ask ourselves tend to act as road blocks preventing from learning and moving forward. The questions tend to be negative of nature and endless-loops.

• Why did this happen to me?
• Why did events have to play out like this?
• Why does this always affect me?
• Why can't I find a solution?
• What is wrong with me?
• Why am I so useless and stupid?

Just writing these questions is depressing the hell out of me. Thankfully, I hardly ever do this anymore. For some people, this is their fixed pattern of questions. No wonder they tend to find themselves more often in an un-resourceful state than a resourceful one.

The questions we ask ourselves, depending on how we choose to focus on events, will have a direct influence on how we feel.

If you want to help someone, first find out what they are focusing on. Is it something they can control and/or influence or is it something where they have no-control? When they begin to describe the situation it is vital to pay attention, because they will tell you the questions they are asking themselves.

Important Note
The patterns people establish work on an unconscious level. Thus, the questions they routinely ask themselves are also being asked at an unconscious level. It is only by drawing their attention to this fact, that they can start to take control over their patterns. This awareness they then have the ability to change the questions they ask, the meaning they assign to an event and finally how they feel.