More is Less and Less is More

In the professional world time is a valuable commodity not to be squandered frivolously.  Unfortunately, there is no shortage of time-wasting, mind-numbing tasks, meetings and people who insatiably devour this limited commodity.

One of the biggest time wasters is when people don’t get to the point.  When I get trapped into these types of conversation my mind always flashes back to the Seinfeld sitcom episode (http://imdb.to/1PzuQuQ) where Jerry, George, Ellen and Kramer spend the entire show wandering around a multi-level car park trying to remember where they parked the car.  Instead of Kramer (or any of them) investing a moment to note down the car’s location, which is both important and relevant, they need to search every corner, aisle and level for the vehicle.  Of course all sorts of others antics ensue during their epic search.   

If people spent even a moment to think about the importance and relevance of their point when communicating in a professional setting we would probably not get lost so often in irrelevant details and exhaustive explanations.

There is a tendency for people to admire and respect a person who is able to articulate their ideas in a clear and concise manner.  It not only shows consideration for another person’s time, but it shows their ability to have a meaningful and controlled conversation.

Taking even a few minutes to reflect on why you need to have the conversation, send the email, or call for a meeting can save you and those involved a lot of frustration and grief.

When working with clients with this particular issue I always ask them to equate their message with writing an article in a newspaper.  People tend to scan through the paper to see if there are any headlines of interest to them.  If they find one the scanning continues to the sub-headlines in the article.  If something peaks their curiosity then they can read the section for more details.  

People tend to ask 2 questions when filtering through the headlines in a newspaper:

1. Why is this important to me?

2. Why is this relevant to me?

When you begin a conversation in a work situation people will be asking themselves these same questions.  Invest a little time up front by knowing what the take home message is and then qualify it by answering the above two questions.

If your communication is an email, report or presentation then you might want to further consider the governing details, which are akin to the sub-headlines in an article.  They are the major points to your take home message.  If people are interested in the minutiae then they will ask. 

When it comes to communication at work the dictum more is less and less is more is both important and relevant.

Curious!  Please visit us at wwww.MINDtalk.no

Are you an inductive or deductive communicator?

The question of this blog entry is an important one. To be able to answer it it is critical to understand what the question is asking. It is not everyday someone categories the way they communicate as either inductive or deductive It explains why I always get quizzical stares after asking the question.

I was recently at a cafe with a friend enjoying a good conversation over a coffee. He was explaining to me how his business trips to the eastern states of Europe went. His explanation meandered hither and dither. It was not until ten minutes later that he got to the point - that it is much harder to do business with the former Soviet states than it is with Western Europe.

The whole time I was wishing he would get to the point. For me, the explanation seemed like a long road with a lot of twists and bends. I kept thinking the final destination was just around the next corner, but there was just another stretch of road. At this point, you might be thinking that I'm an impatient geezer. (You are not too far off.)

The simple example shows the difference between an inductive and deductive communicator. My friend is an inductive speaker. That is, he has the general tendency to first talk about the details and second about the point. I'm more of a deductive communicator. That is, I mention the point first and then present the details.

Is one type better than another? No. They are simply two patterns of explaining information. The take-away lesson is that it is a good idea to be aware if the person you are talking to uses an inductive or deductive pattern of speech.

For example, when I'm explaining something to my friend (the same friend from the earlier example), I usually start off with the details and then get to the point. For me, this is more laboursome. For my friend, it is the natural pattern of his thinking. By taking the extra time and effort I know my message has a greater chance of being understood.

In my coaching practice, one of the first things I want to know is the pattern of thinking of my client. The simple fact of understanding if a person likes details first or prefers the point first, helps me heaps in establishing a strong rapport with him/her.

So dear reader, do you prefer the details first or th point? Not to sound repetitive, are you an inductive or an deductive communicator?

- On the road with my iPhone

How to Coach

New Years is fast approaching and so is the desire for people to make resolutions.  As we all know, most resolutions will never see the light of day.  Those of us who have the fortitude to follow through with the changes begin to see positive changes soon enough.

Studies show that those of us who have a friend who work along with us to fulfil a resolution often do so with a greater chance of success.  Not only do we have an internal promise with ourselves to make the healthy change, we also have an external promise to another that drives us forward.  It is that external commitment that is the catalyst for change.  People generally find it very difficult to break a promise they've made to a friend.

If you are that friend who is helping a buddy to fulfil a resolution, perhaps the following tips can help make the job a little easier.

There are two spectrums I'll focus on.  The first is the Asking/Telling spectrum.  Your job in helping a friend is to get them to think about and commit to the change they want to make.  You can simply tell them what to do, because you've been down that particular road and know what curves and bends to expect. 

Telling  someone what to do can help to some extent, but it is not very effective.  The reason is that you are advising an action from your perspective and experience of the world.  The person you are advising has neither your perspective nor your particular experience of the world.  They may heed your advise and get positive results, but it will never be as effective if the person makes their own connections. 

Instead of telling someone it is always wiser for you to ask.  That is, ask people questions.  Let them find their own answers.  If they make the connections themselves, the lessons learned will be intergrated at a much deeper level, which will also increase the likelihood that change will take hold. 

You may have deep knowledge and experience in a certain area where a friend wishes to make changes.  You will most likely know a brilliant short-cut to get him/her to where they want to go.  You could simply tell them, but asking them will be more lasting.  Your knowledge and experience is the road map and allows you to design specific questions to focus your friend's attention in the right direction.  As they answer your questions they are following the correct road map, but they are drawing a road map from their own perspective.  It's a map that makes sense to your friend and which is unique to him/her.

The second spectrum is the problem/solution.  The focus on both the problem and solution have their own roles, but caution is still warrented. 

Focusing on the problem is important to understand how it is influencing a person in the here and now.  Both you and your friend need to clarify what it is that is preventing or hindering any movement forward.  Where the caution is needed is not tripping into the pitfall of digging too deep into why the problem is there in the first place.  What's done is done.  There is no going back.  We can not change the past and so there is no use in dragging up old pains.  It serves no purpose.

Once you and your friend understand where he/she stands in the present, then the focus should targeted on finding a solution.  When people start to talk about possibilities and actionables, this is a very motivating force.  It gives people the sense that they have control and oversight. 

An important factor to remember is to help the person paint a vivid and detailed picture in their minds of the solution.  If a person can see it, they can do it.  The opposite is also true - if a person can't picture something they can't do it.  It is that simple.  So when you are asking questions, whiche focus on the solution, try to get your friend to picture his/her way forward.

Never, ever advise!

'We see the world as we are, and not as the world is. ' - Anaïs Nin

I admit that the title of this entry is a little over the top. Advice does come in handy, but we need to think about how and when we give advice. You may be a parent, a leader, a coach, a friend and so on. Regardless or your role or roles, I think this short entry is useful.

I want you to imagine that you and your significant other decided it was time to upgrade your computers. You make a jaunt down to the local GeeksRus and purchase two computers. They are completely identical software and hardware wise.

After a few months of use you one day forget your pc at the office. You borrow your significant other's. You find after only a few seconds that you cannot make heads or tails of rhe pc in front of you. Nothing is where it should be. It all seems so disorganized to you, but it makes complete sense to her or him.

This is an analogy that describes how each of our brains are wired. From a distance they look identical, but upon closer inspection each brain is completely unique.

Each of us has our own set of experiences and lessons learned that are unique to us. This forms a kInd of mental map, which influences how we each perceive and interact with the world. How each of us stores, encodes, organizes these lessons and experiences are also as indiviual as we are.

When it comes to us advising another person as to how to accomplish or tackle a situation, we are advising them from our perspective of the world. We are not taking into account their map of the world.

This is where a shift in thinking is needed. We may know from experience the best way to overcome an obstacle that is proven time and again to be effective. What we have to remember that we've had time to integrate this method into our map of the world. Someone confronting the same obstacle may be doing so for the first time. They have no map.

If we want to help them, it is best for us to allow them to connect the dots. So instead of advising we can ask well-engineered questions to help direct their thinking in the right direction.

Questions allow for the person to make the logical connections, and thus integrate the information into their mental map. An 'aha' moment usually soon follows. They see the light.

Questions that flow from the well of experience and knowledge is so much more valuable to a learner than straight-forward advise that flows from the same well.

- On the road with my iPhone

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

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.

Anthony Robbins & Psychology

I find that at least once a month I am going back to my collection of psychology text books from grad school to refresh my mind on a particular approach to counseling or clinical psychology. What usually triggers this can be simple curiosity or a client who presents a particular challenge.

I was not a student who followed any particular discipline or branch of psychology. I had, and still have, a rather eclectic interest in all things psychological. It was a couple of years after grad school that a buddy of mine gave me an Anthony Robbins archaic tape collection from the mid-80's. I listened to it and thought it was interesting enough, but it really didn't spark that intense of a curiosity.

It was not until a few years later that I was again reintroduced to Robbins by another friend who this time gave me an mp3 collection. By this time, Robbins had been in the business of helping people for 20 to 25 years. This time when I listened to him he caught my attention. He still had the same vitality and energy in his voice, but now it was tempered with experience and humility. I listened and I learned. What he had to say added very much to my schooling in psychology.

Back to my main point. When I return to my book case or my iTunes library, I find that I am listening more to Anthony Robbins. His way of helping people is highly-effective and compliments much that I learned studying clinical psychology.

So for any of you coaches out there (or anyone who is looking to change for the better), I would suggest listening to anything Robbins in the last decade or so.

I find listening to his audio products very engaging. As for seeing him live, I have not done that, yet. I don't think I would either. Why is that? It seems so evangelical and cult-ish. With the chanting and the cheering.

Perhaps with time my views will change. Until that time, I think I'll stick with the mp3s and the insight and useful skills and techniques for helping people.

Made to Stick

Hey folks! I've just recently finished a great book Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to get their ideas to stick in people's heads. Definitely a brilliant resource for managers and entrepreneurs.

Below is a succinct review of the book from The Washington Post. Below you will find a link to the author's website. Good reading!

Here is the link... http://www.madetostick.com/

If you sign up for their newsletter you can also grab some very useful goodies.

In 'Sticky' Ideas, More Is Less

By Barry Schwartz,
a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College and author of "The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less"
Wednesday, January 17, 2007; C08

MADE TO STICK

Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

By Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Random House. 291 pp. $24.95

"If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will." So said Mother Teresa, and she was right. For a variety of reasons, some of them recently documented in laboratory studies by research psychologists, people who are either left cold or are overwhelmed when confronted with the suffering of thousands will rush into action when they are presented with a way to save one starving child.

"Made to Stick," by brothers Chip and Dan Heath, is an attempt to explain this peculiar fact and many others like it. Why is it that some ideas "stick," remaining vivid in memory and calling on people to act, whereas others just fade away? Is it in the nature of the ideas themselves, or does it have something to do with how they are "packaged"? And if the latter, are there lessons to be learned about packaging that will help people who are trying to influence public opinion and action?

The brothers Heath are in a good position to write such a book. Chip, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford, has actually done research on what makes ideas "sticky." Dan is co-founder of Thinkwell, a textbook company whose aim, of course, is to find a way to present information to students in a way that "sticks." And they have written a fine, "sticky" book -- one that lays out the determinants of stickiness; illustrates them with vivid examples from disparate settings (e.g., business, education and effective social movements); warns us of obstacles that must be negotiated if ideas are to be sticky; and provides a set of "idea clinics," examples of good ideas presented in not so good ways, along with steps to make them better.

The reader also learns some important principles of modern psychology: about how memory is organized, about how emotion affects action, about how knowing too much can get in the way of effective communication and about the power of stories. Anyone interested in influencing others -- to buy, to vote, to learn, to diet, to give to charity or to start a revolution -- can learn from this book.

The Heaths identify six core ingredients of stickiness, organized by the acronym "SUCCES." To stick, ideas should be Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotion-evoking and embedded in Stories. Each of these key features is illustrated with several examples. "It's the economy, stupid," James Carville's famous guide to Bill Clinton's campaign for president, embodies simplicity: "If you say three things, you say nothing" was Carville's point.

The willingness of Nordstrom employees to gift-wrap items purchased elsewhere is an example of the unexpected -- the extraordinary service Nordstrom offers its customers. So was JFK's promise, out of the blue, to get a man on the moon.

Teacher Jane Elliott of Riceville, Iowa, made racism concrete to her white, third-grade students on the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination by dividing up the class by eye color and making the division matter. Scientist Barry Marshall made credible to a disbelieving audience of his peers that ulcers are caused by bacteria by ingesting said bacteria and developing the symptoms of ulcers.

A charity called World Vision applied Mother Teresa's lesson by inviting First World people to "adopt" specific Third World children, each with a name, a face and a story. And TV producer Roone Arledge got people who didn't know the shape of a football to become sports fans by having his sportscasters tell one triumph-over-adversity story after another about the players, just as Subway, thanks to TV commercials dramatizing the weight loss of Jared Fogle, got Americans to think about fast food as diet food.

I find the Heaths' analysis convincing and their recommendations quite helpful. I think I will be a better teacher if I keep SUCCES in mind when preparing materials for my classes. But at the same time, the very power of their story is troubling. For there are three other features of ideas that, to my mind, ought to be affecting their stickiness: Ideas should be socially beneficial, or Worthwhile; they should be Important; and, above all, they should be True (which is not the same as credible). SUCCES needs to be modified by WIT. Most of the examples discussed in the book have WIT, but this, I think, is the product of well-chosen examples.

The tools of SUCCES in the hands of WITty people will serve us well, but these same tools, in the hands of mean-spirited people or charlatans, will do us in. We will be misled, misinformed and steered off course. In addition, as more people become SUCCESful, it will grow increasingly difficult for the WITty successful people to rise above water in a sea of bad, trivial, sticky ideas.

The Heaths are mindful of this problem, though they don't address it directly. First, one of the things that initially piqued their interest in sticky ideas was "urban legends," pretty much all of which are sticky but false. It isn't the stickiness of "ulcers are bacterial" that distinguishes it from urban legends; it's the truth value. Second, the Heaths acknowledge that their advice may cheapen the currency when they point out how it isn't enough to say that something is "unusual" anymore; it has to be "unique." To put it another way, "unusual" just isn't unusual enough to cut it anymore. And when everyone around you is applying SUCCES, you will have to exaggerate, distort or even lie to be noticed.

What can we do to make the idea of global warming stick? I thought that in "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore (unlike "Brownie") really did a heck of a job. Was it good enough? I have my doubts. And if not, is it because the thought of one-tenth of the world's people under water wasn't sticky enough or because we've already got too many ideas stuck to us already? Without some WIT to modulate SUCCES, I'm afraid we'll all end up drowning.

Coaching Tools of Imagery

In this entry, I would like to describe three of the seven tools of
imagery from he discipline of sports psycology I use when coaching
clients.

The first is the ability to paint a clear picture of what is wanted or
needed. A majority of people, when describing or telling about
something, tend to use language that is vague and general. This allows room for the possibility for misunderstanding or miscommunication to creep into the communication. The best remedy for this is to use language that is specific and concrete.

Remember- people are not able to do something if they can't picture it
in their minds. When we communicate in order to help someone improve
their performance, we need to remember that any performance consists
of an (or a series of) action/behaviors.

If we want our message to be clearly understood, we need to be
specific and concrete. To improve performance, the message should
communicate what he/she should see, hear, feel and do.

For example, if I'm taking golf lessons from a pro and he simply says,
'hit the ball straight' or 'stay on the fairway and out of the rough',
this is too vague and general. At the same time as my frustration is
increasing with his inadequate instruction, the 'how do I do that'
question grows in equal proportion.

If I am to improve my game, a good instructor is going to tell me how
I should see my stance, how I should hold amd feel the grip of the
club, what I should hear when I hit the ball squarely. He uses the
language of imagery to paint a clear picture by specifically telling
me what I should see, feel and hear when I'm swinging the club.

The second tool is the ability to link a current action or behavior to
an end goal. Leaders, teachers and coaches are consistently trying to
motivate their people to increase performance and build skill. One way
of doing this is by painting how a current behavior is linked to the
acheivment of an overall goal.

For example, a boxing coach will mention how training on the speed-bag
increases eye-hand coordination and reaction speed, which makes a
significant difference in the ring by delivering more punches with
speed and snap.

In a business scenario, getting a client to see that practicing
conflict resolution skills with current challenges will increase his
competence as an effective leader and communicator.

It is important to link the 'what' - the present action or behavior-
to the 'why' - the reasoning why what they are doing leads to a payoff
- to the 'where' what the payoff will be in the end.

Another reason to use the second tool is that it allows the employee/
athlete to understand the direction you want to take them. By
communicating the end-goal, it also allows them to be able to map out
the steps necessary to acheive the goal depending on it's complexity.

The third, and final, tool that I'll describe in this entry is getting
the employee/athlete to translate words into imagery. This is critical
when the person is internalizing instructions. To be able to
completely understand the instuction they need to be able to imagine
doing it.

A key part of learning anything is the ability to take new knowledge
and to intergrate it with exsisting knolwedge. To do this the learner
needs to be able to see himself/herself doing/feeling/hearing the
action. By getting the learner to describe in his/her own words what
he/she sees and hears it speeds the intergration of new knowledge.

For example, after teaching a client the appropriate way to give
corrective feedback, I would ask her what I would see and hear her
doing if she was giving appropriate feedback to a colleague. By her
explaining it to me she went through the mental exercise of
translating my instructions into imagery. Again, she is spoke the
language of performance, which her mind and body can very easily
understand and integrate.

The take-home message is this: insure the message you're communicating
is specific and concrete. The listener will precisely understand,
through the language of imagery, what he/she has to see, hear, feel
and do in order to perform at a higher level. If he/she can picture
the behavior/action in their mind, they will be able to perform the
behavior/action.

Cordially,

Jason W Liem
MINDtalk@email.com
www.mindtalk.no

Sports Psych and Giving Feedback

Communication is a skill that is often overlooked. Indeed, when we are in the presence of others we are constantly communicating, whether we like it or not. What we don’t say often says more than what we do say, and we sometimes say one thing and mean another
What is communication?

Is that a strange question to ask? Well, not really, because many of us will have experienced the manager at work that believes he is communicating through his barrage of memos, or the teacher that talks at the class but doesn’t listen. Both of these people communicate, to a degree, but are they effective?

Verbal communication occurs when we talk, listen, shout, sing, write or read. Non-verbal communication occurs through facial expression and body language, and can be very powerful. We’ve all noticed when someone says one thing and means another. That person has failed to realise that while they verbally communicating one thing, they are sending out a powerful and contradictory message when they quickly cough or shift their eyes from yours.
With whom do athletes communicate?

Athletes in different sports have to communicate with many different people in different ways. The elite athlete might communicate very openly and emotionally with a coach, say, that they have worked with for a long time – even more so than with their own parents. The same athlete may have to hold formal, contractual discussions or conduct press conferences. The variety of different people that an athletes may need to communicate with is great, and include coaching staff, the media, fans, team-mates, scientists, family, officials (umpire/referee) and competitors.
When do athletes communicate?

Apart from “all of the time”, of course! There are times at which effective communication are key. These include:

* In training – getting more out of your coaching sessions, letting your coach know when you are experiencing difficulty and helping team-mates out with their training;
* Before competition– making sure your coach knows whether preparation is going well; making sure your coach’s pep talk is helping you;
* In competition – using signals and code to communicate tactics, to help team-mates perform, to keep the team together, to request help; and
* After competition – feeding back on how you felt to your coach, asking for feedback from your coach, seeking emotional support; dealing with family & other important people.

Tools of the Trade

When it comes to sitting in a coaching session, I've found it very useful to keep the tools of the trade low-tech. Having a small notebook and a couple of pens works best for me.

Conversations have a tendency to be very organic. That is, a conversation is like a tree. It will begin on a main root, but will naturally branch off in a new direction. The reasons for this are as numerous as the leafs on a tree. The point is that a conversation can branch of several times in different directions. Perhaps it may return to the original root of the conversation or it blooms into a completely different direction.

I have found it to be critical to be aware of these conversational branches and to mark them down in my notebook. I usually write down a key-word that the client has said that has triggered the change in direction. This helps me to track the flow of the conversation. I do this for several reasons.

Sometimes the client may be in the midst of explaining an issue using general and vague terms. If it is at a point in the conversation where they are still in a flow of thought, I will note down the key-word or phrase. When he/she comes to the natural end-point of their thought-flow, I will reflect back to what I wrote down and ask for clarification.

I have developed my own little symbols and short-hand to note down these conversational branches. It's necessary to do this since coaching dialogues move very fast and the direction can shift in an exhale. It allows me to move with the rapid speed of the conversation while still taking notes to move the client to be more specific and concrete.

I've yet to discover anything that is better than a notebook (my choice is moleskines http://www.moleskine.co.uk/ ) and a couple of pens.