Icebreakers for Meeting Planners and Facilitators

The days of one-liner jokes as ice breakers are gone, and there are many new creative ideas. The most popular are games that have participants reveal something personal about themselves, or which encourage participants to get to know each other personally. The idea is that more than just having fun, the ice breaker will truly help to create group cohesion based on trust and understanding.

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How to Get People to Do … What You Want Them to Do

If this article title pulled you in, maybe you’ve recently realized that having a better tactic or using your charisma is not producing the influence you would have hoped. You’ve read the leadership and negotiation books and you’ve witnessed some disturbing YouTube videos that appear to prove you no longer need talent or a point to be in front of a camera. However, depending on your age and situation, one or more of the following all-consuming problems still remain: Your employees just can’t get the job done, your boss is a low-IQ narcissist, your parents think you actually want their life, your girlfriend is addicted to vampire books, your boyfriend is still a “skater-dude” at age 30, or your 22-year-old son has just told you “I don’t, like, see myself as, like, working every day at a job and stuff.”

Could it be that what works for others in the area of influence will not work for you? Over the years, Wynn Solutions (along with former Gallup researchers) has conducted anonymous surveys with thousands of extremely influential people who have a proven track record of motivating people to do what needs to be done. From them, we found the root of influence to be some foundational ideas that we often deem irrelevant.

Here are those ideas:

Are you proving to people that you see them as valuable? Have you told them that you appreciate their talent and could not have done so well without them? That’s very different from just saying “Good job!” And it’s not as ridiculous as saying “You’ll have a job here as long as you want one,” which seems to indicate that they will definitely quit – it’s just a question of when.

Are you being sincere but emphatic with your adult child who still lives at home? These days, over 50 percent of all adults 18-26 years old live with their parents. So if you are in your 20s and living at home, it’s pretty close to normal these days. However, if you have an adult child still living at home, not making a contribution, wearing your bathrobe, and wanting to know when more food will be arriving, you need to be forthright. You might say something loving but pointed, like this: “The only way someone else will appreciate you as much as we do is if they see you as self-sufficient. You and your generation have more opportunities and greater knowledge than any other generation has ever had. So getting out on your own (which will involve leaving this house, by the way) will cause the good things in life to come your way.” Letting them stay too long sends the message “We love you so much that we’re willing to sacrifice your ability to be a functional adult.” Being 37 and still living at Mom and Dad’s house is more than just pathetic; it’s creepy.

Do you have extreme clarity? Intelligence is not enough. It doesn’t matter how smart you are if no one knows what you’re talking about. The average IQ for an executive is 104, which is lower than the average for middle management. But if you think your boss is stupid, remember that he’s just smart enough to be your boss! If you’ve ever been to a Mensa meeting, you might have noticed a disturbing number of 35- to 50-year-olds wearing backpacks and a lot of crummy cars in the parking lot. Intelligence is just a small part of influence.

As for tried-and-true solutions, it all comes down to value.

  1. If you want to be influential, you must be able to clearly state your value(or the value of whatever you’re proposing). Clarity is the foundation of value. People buy into what they grasp quickly. The leading addiction on the planet is not drugs or alcohol or video games. It’s convenience. We will abandon a complex process that works for a mediocre one that’s easy but barely works. Simply stated, good ideas just aren’t good enough. Case in point: It took 40 years to get seatbelts in cars, but they green-lighted the Pet Rock at the first meeting. Spray cheese caught on pretty quickly too.We are influenced by things that sound good instantly, and nothing sounds better than what we seem to already believe. Making things very clear makes them familiar. When we hear something clearly stated, we will often say, “Oh, yes. That’s common sense.” But the truth is we did not think of it until it was very clearly stated. Clarity makes the stated value make sense. So if you think this paragraph has told you something that you already knew, then you are right and enlightened at the same time.
  2. To influence people under 30 years old, what you propose must make sense at a very basic level. This younger generation grew up with so much information thrown at them that you’ve got to be able to show them whyyou’re doing something. If it doesn’t make relevant sense to them today, they will question it and have difficulty taking action on it. If you want young people to come to work early, you need a real business reason – not just that you like to get to work at 7:30 a.m. and don’t particularly care for loneliness.
  3. The key to getting people to do what you want them to do is understanding what they value. In its clearest, simplest form, what they value is love, money, and prestige. If they can get that from you, they’re willing to listen and take action. Unfortunately, most people believe they need to outsmart others to get them to take action. So if you’re upset because you think the world is run by idiots – well, you might have a point. Most research shows that it’s easier to simplify things so you can compete. The truth is that when it comes to getting people to take action, in many cases, explaining your value is more valuable than actually having it.
  4. It all comes down to engagement. You may have heard the term “employee engagement” or “client/customer engagement” and just viewed it as corporate buzzword, but it’s the ultimate foundation of success. Engagement is what this article is really all about. You need real personal influence to make it happen. It’s hard to be successful at your job if you think no one at work cares about you (especially your boss). It’s difficult to write a check to someone who does not value you as a person. So the key word that ties it all together is value. The way to make sure people see your value and are willing to make a decision that will benefit you is to show them that they are valued. Then you have a level of engagement; you also end up with a minimal amount of haters. There is always that one person who hates success, Christmas, pizza, vacation days and money (your money, of course, not theirs).

According to Evolve Performance Group, an organization run by former Gallup executives and researchers, engaged employees are 40 times more likely to say they would recommend their company as a great place to work, and 4.5 times more likely to recommend their company’s products and services. So not only is being influential the best way to get people to do what you want them to do; it’s something you have to do just to compete.

The idea is to position yourself up front with all the influence tactics you can and then throw all your effort behind that. This strategy is central to a story I often tell about a speaking engagement I had at a convention years ago. My wife was in the audience for my event. She’d just heard me speak and she was clapping – yes, even after a few years together, she still applauded (maybe because I was through talking). In fact, she clapped so hard that she lost the diamond in her ring, but she didn’t know it at the time. So the next day she goes back and starts searching all along the 10,000-square-foot parquet floor. The custodians have already swept and mopped. Twice. Nothing has turned up. Everyone’s thinking, “Lady, you’re never going to find it.” But my wife insists, “I’m looking anyway.” So she’s on the ground, face to the floor, searching, searching… She’s sucking up dust bunnies for a full hour and a half before she spies a little glimmer from across the room. And there it is! In the end, we walked away with two big lessons. First, if something is important enough to you – if you believe in it enough – then the effort, skill, talent, and ability generated from your body and channeled into achievement is amazing. But also, if you buy a r-e-a-l-l-y BIG diamond, it’s a LOT easier to find.

The Real Truth About Safety: Creating a Culture of Buy In

How do safety leaders and managers create a culture of safety?

Knowing that safety is important is clearly not enough to create (or even put a dent in creating) a culture of safety and  incident-free environments. We have heard the messages “Safety First,” “Target Zero” and, as a very dedicated guy in rural Louisiana explained it, “We ain’t toleratin’ no more dead dudes!” As powerful and eloquent as these messages might be, they haven’t produced the buy-in we might have hoped for.

Frankly, it’s not hard to imagine some skepticism arising in response to these messages. When I hear “Safety First,” I wonder: Are you paying me to do my job or to just not get hurt while attempting to do my job? The motto “Target Zero” seems to ignore the fact that in some industries we will have recordable incidents and fatalities regardless of huge improvements. Just because there is always some idiot who thinks that Jägermeister and welding are a great combo, does that mean we have failed at safety?

Overall the improvement is tremendous: in the past 25 years, we have managed to do very well and people are much safer on the job than ever before. But it seems that the complacency that causes some accidents can actually be created by having a great safety record. After all, if you have no recordable incidents for a year and you have seen great improvement, what’s next? Well … how ’bout Jimmy walking and texting (neither of which he does well) – and slipping and hurting his back?

The only way to change a culture is to get an extremely high level of repeatable buy-in. That means the message from leadership has to be very clear, simple to implement and not a total pain in the ass! It also means that we have to be realistic about what’s working. Have you noticed that the job site with the best safety record is the one where the boss makes everyone feel valuable, the people seem to trust one another and everyone gets along well? It’s true. There may be a few exceptions – a place where Jimmy and his three brothers (all less sharp than he is) happen to work, for example. (If your name happens to be Jimmy, it does not mean you’re accident prone. It’s just the name we are using in the article based on the fact that there seem to be a lot of guys named Jimmy in jobs that involve tools or machinery.)

Most research confirms that when people feel valuable, they make fewer mistakes. They are more loyal and they watch out for each other. They are consistently willing to do more of what they are asked to do. All of that results in dramatically fewer incidents and a true culture of safety.  But how do you make that happen in your organization or at your location?

Here are seven ways to make sure you achieve a culture of safety and that your environment is positioned to reduce incidents:

  1. Beware of mixed messages: “Hey, you guys, be safe but hurry up! Don’t be so safe that we can’t make any money!” The real message is “Let’s get it done before 5 p.m. – but if you get outside the safety guidelines, rethink it.”
  2. Make sure that the people around you understand that you have their back. They will be more likely to have yours. Watch your behavior and treat others with respect. Guess who will not have anyone rushing back into the burning building to save him? That’s right, the guy who nobody likes!
  3. Be realistic about how people feel about safety procedures. If you have a process or situation that everyone makes fun of or complains about, look into it and make adjustments. There is nothing more dangerous than expecting people to be protected by things they obviously don’t believe in.
  4. Remember that many accidents happen indoors in office environments. Approximately 76,000 people each year are hospitalized from putting their feet on their desks and leaning back in a chair. Acting like a big shot is not only obnoxious; it’s apparently dangerous! Also, women in high heels who stepped from carpeted surfaces to hard floors had a surprising number of injuries. (To be fair, I think men in high heels had even more.)
  5. Communication skills are the foundation of safety. Let people talk about what’s important to them before you tell them your opinions. People who feel heard are much more likely to listen to you. To make safety happen, we have to be influential enough to have what we say create actions in others. If people see their input in your safety solution, they are much more likely to have buy-in and much less likely to be injured.
  6. Don’t tell the guys in their 20s how brave you were “back in the day” before modern safety equipment. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, and that means our younger brothers and sisters especially. On a job site, I once heard a guy in his 50s say to group of people in their 20s, “You young guys have all this protective clothing and special tools! In the ’70s, we were down in there naked with a Q-tip!” Challenging someone’s manhood makes you part of the problem.
  7. Make sure you can clearly explain the value of a safety procedure or policy in 30 seconds. People buy into what they understand quickly. The leading addiction on the planet is not drugs or alcohol; it’s convenience. People will consistently abandon a safe process that’s complicated for an unsafe one that’s not. Keep it simple. It does not matter how smart you are if nobody knows what you’re talking about!

Whether you are a leader who is driving safety forward or just a person on the job trying be good at what you do without being hurt, it requires influence. Are you influential enough to make safety happen around you? Do you have the trust and the relationships in place to help safety concepts and procedures remain effective? For some of you, it may be hard to buy into how important it is for people to have a supportive environment to do their job. You may think that it’s all “charm school BS” and people should just do what they are supposed to do and be safe. But in reality, the overwhelming success of this approach is kind of like listening to NASCAR on the radio; you personally may not believe it makes any sense, but for some strange reason it’s still happening!

Millennial Mystique: How to attract, keep, and get better performance from Gen Y

[social_warfare]

 

Many industries seem to be experiencing a shortage of young workers. It’s easy to attribute that to a lack of qualified applicants, an aging workforce that’s apparently too broke to retire, or Millennials who simply feel, as they comfortably rest in their parents’ open arms, that they don’t need a job right now!

Reality is setting in as those Baby Boomers who are beginning to retire leave companies with massive voids to fill. For the 76 million people born between 1946 and 1964, who in 2011 began reaching retirement age (at the alarming rate of 8,000 a day for the next 18 years, according to AARP.org), the concern is no longer whether these Gen Y people can do the job so much as it is where are they?! The mindset is starting to shift from “I am concerned that young Tyler lacks a sense of urgency” to “OMG – who’s going to replace old Bill?” It seems in our heavy judgment of Millennials, also referred known as Gen Y, we have forgotten there are no other young “people groups” entering the workforce at the moment. Gen Y is it.

Especially in the workplace, Baby Boomers, Generation X (born between 1964 and 1980), and Millennials don’t always think or believe the same things. Gen Xers in particular are concerned that people in their 20s and early 30s don’t have the right work ethic and are introducing questionable changes to the office environment.

Yet, realistically, companies may need to embrace these changes and start shaping their businesses to be more attractive to the fresh faces that will inevitably become the majority of the workforce. It is important that we manage people based on who they are, not who we wish them to be. That’s called hope, and hope is not a strategy. The worst leadership tactic on earth is wishing someone were like you. Historically, helping people develop their own brilliance is much more effective than just giving them yours.

The true Millennial work ethic is that they “do not live to work – but rather work to live. A job merely provides the income to do what they want to do.”[1] Millennials learned from their stressed-out parents that they wanted to get more out of life. Many young Boomers (ages 49 to 54) did something other generations did not do: they complained to their kids about how much they worked and how they did not have enough time to enjoy life. This doesn’t mean that people 34 years or younger will not work hard or have passion for their career; they are just much less likely to sacrifice their personal life.

The Challenge

How do you accept the challenge to change your game?

  • Create a culture that gives these younger workers a life, not just a future. Through our research we found that Millennials desperately seek work that will fulfill their spirit, passion, and lifestyle more than work that just fills their wallet. In 2011, Toronto Globe and Mail reported findings from an extensive survey about Millennials’ work expectations. According to the article, “university students surveyed said work-life balance and vacation time ranked extremely high on their wish list.”[2] It makes sense, since they grew up with parents who expressed regret about overworking.
  • Consider: less work, more money. The same survey reflected that, among Millennials, “high salaries and quick promotions were important too; on average, they expected $53,000 [Canadian, or about US$43,100] a year starting salary.”[3] The question Millennials ask is this: “What’s the path that leads to leadership, and is it worth it?” That means, from a management standpoint, you have to take a close look at the value the new young employee can bring to your company, not just what you think you should be paying that young employee. Furthermore, opportunities should not be based on how you have done it in the past unless you can validate that practice with a clear, reasonable explanation.
  • Acknowledge their foundation of debt. Today’s young workers start out with more debt than previous generations. More things eat at their paychecks before they even have a chance to develop adult-like bills. This does not mean you have to pay more than you have in the past or raise salaries across the board. However, it should prompt you to examine the benefits of meeting their requirements, while envisioning what your organization might look like with underpaid, second-string players. Also, if you offer them promotions that include working 35 percent more hours per week, they might not be interested. They want leadership, but not at the price of time away from friends and family. They are willing, however, to work late from home more than previous generations were, and they’re generally not fond of being tethered to an office simply because working late is considered part of doing a good job. They want to be compensated for their efforts, not for their time under your watch.
  • Realize that Millennials are the products of their parents. They witnessed their Baby Boomer and early Gen X moms and dads working hard, regardless of the cost to the family unit. Gen Y saw their parents stay with one company, miss family events, and not enjoy all the opportunities of a full life. Many Boomer parents worked hard to create comfortable lifestyles for their families, hoping to eventually enjoy their success when they had earned enough. Their Millennial kids would have preferred a smaller house, fewer vacations, and more face time with their parents.
  • Don’t offer them what their parents had. They don’t want it! The rebelling nature of the Millennial generation stems from this mindset. They don’t want the path their parents took. That cost is too high. Yes, Millennials grew up seeing strong work ethic, but they were also told “You can do whatever you put your mind to.” From that mentality comes their new method of working: they’d rather have flexible hours and a self-fulfilling job than sit in a cubicle for the next 40 years waiting to become obsolete. As Americus Reed, a Wharton School of Business marketing professor, detailed in a 2014 podcast, “Millennials tend to be very socially aware, are prone to be more public about it and … spend more time than their parents thinking ‘Why am I here? What am I going to leave behind? How am I going to change the world?’”[4]

Millennials are the generation of now. Thus, they want to enjoy their lives today and not just work hard toward a retirement that, from their viewpoint, does not look so wonderful. There are pros and cons to this: They are happy with their choices. They feel fulfilled. They are cheaper labor. However, the downside is that they are not terribly concerned with building that 401K right now, so they show far less desire than past generations to secure a high-paying, salaried job with more benefits but less work-life balance.

Perhaps learning why you might want to change your game has left you asking two questions: Don’t all young people want to live for today and get what they want without working so hard? And isn’t it just idealistic youth that makes them want to change the world and bask in the glow of how important they are to the future?

No, not really. With the change of the U.S. school system – the largest change in 200 years – and global cultural shifts breaking the traditions of generations before them, this is more than just the latest version of “how young people are.” They are the first generation to believe as a culture that

  1. partnerships have more value than trying to be competitive;
  2. irrefutable laws of science and math are just the opinion of the time, not necessarily a guide for future success;
  3. expressing intolerance and prejudice toward people different from you immediately disqualifies any other valuable traits you might have;
  4. every problem comes with an automatic solution; and
  5. no job is worth taking if it prohibits daily social interaction with their peers (i.e., social media use during work).

Those things alone will create an environment that (for better or for worse) is not likely to resemble any that have come before it.

Moving toward solutions

Companies need to know where to look to find Millennials seeking jobs. Times have changed, and the job search has changed as well. Be up to date on which databases are popular among Millennials for job postings. Youtube, Myspace, LinkedIn, Craigslist – all of these websites have postings. Check them out. See what your company can promote, because Millennials are looking!

Also be aware that, culturally, Millennials in the United States differ from those in other countries. In a 2014 study cited in Harvard Business Review,[5] researchers surveyed 16,637 people from 43 countries to learn what Millennials want from the workplace. The most important finding was that Millennials’ views vary considerably by culture. Therefore, if your company is global, be sure you do your homework concerning the culture of your non-Western Millennials before you recruit. You want to be able to offer what they’re seeking.

Engagement creates performance

To draw the best performance out of Millennials – and pretty much all other humans – you need to create engagement. In its simplest form, engagement occurs when leadership consistently exceeds the expectations of their employees. When that happens, employees become fully engaged.

It may take a new environment with seemingly a lot of perks; but at its core, eliciting performance from Millennials is about having fully engaged workers. According to Evolve Performance Group, a research firm headed by former Gallup executives, fully engaged employees are 40 times more likely to recommend their company as a great place to work, 15.5 times more likely to say they will spend their careers with the organization, 4.5 times more likely to recommend their companies’ products and services, and 9 times more likely to report they have excellent work-life balance.[6] Although you might not like what it takes to fully engage Millennials, it’s critical to find a way to make it happen.

A very different view

Sometimes, creating that engagement requires innovative thinking. How do you create a positive environment for this younger workforce? How do you show you care for them and your company?

Dan Price, owner of Gravity Payments, recently equalized the salaries of his 120-person company to $70,000.[7] Price established the company at age 19; now, at 30, he has taken a major cut to his million-dollar salary to be equal with his workers and increase the pay scale of his employees. This is a Millennial’s way of thinking. Money and power are nice, but they’re distinctly not necessary if you aren’t working in a positive environment.

Change is good. It requires being open to new ideas. We realize that many people over 35 years old cannot grasp the equalized salary concept – and it might not be practical for many organizations – but it’s just an example of how Gen Y values fairness and community in a way that previous generations have not.

If you belong to one of those previous generations, this Millennial mindset might strike you as foreign. Where did it come from? Mostly, it’s the doing of young Boomers and older Gen Xers who wanted to raise kids with more self-esteem, environmental consciousness, and peer support than their own generations had. So congratulations! You’ve succeeded.

Millennials are here to stay. According to a Business and Professional Women’s Foundation study quoted in Forbes, by 2025 these Gen Y workers will make up 75% of the global workforce.[8] The turnover is coming. You can’t ignore it, but you can be ready for it. With their influx creating such a shift in workforce mindset, you might be feeling that Millennials want to have their cake and eat it too. But maybe that old saying should be subjected to a more modern analysis – because, really, why would Millennials want a cake they couldn’t eat? Why would anyone?

[1] Mark McCrindle, “Understanding Generation Y,” published by the Australian Leadership Foundation (North Parrametta, New South Wales: 2007), https://innovationfeeder.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/understandinggeny.pdf[2] Margaret Wente, “Inside the Entitlement Generation,” The [Toronto] Globe and Mail, September 17, 2011.
[3] Wente, “Inside the Entitlement Generation.”
[4] Americus Reed, “How Millennials Think Differently About Brands,” Knowledge@Wharton, October 6, 2014, https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-millennials-think-differently-about-brands/.
[5] Henrik Bresman, “What Millennials Want from Work, Charted across the World,” Harvard Business Review, February 23, 2015, https://hbr.org/2015/02/what-millennials-want-from-work-charted-across-the-world.
[6] “What’s All This Hype about Employee Engagement?” Evolve Performance Group, March 18, 2015, https://evolvepg.com/about/whatsevolving/id/252/whats-all-this-hype-about-employee-engagement.
[7] Patricia Cohen, “Owner of Credit Card Processor Is Setting a New Minimum Wage: $70,000 a Year,” New York Times, April 14, 2015, B3.
[8] Erica Dhawan, “Gen-Y Workforce and Workplace Are Out of Sync,” Forbes,January 23, 2012, https://www.forbes.com/sites/85broads/2012/01/23/gen-y-workforce-and-workplace-are-out-of-sync/.

Change is Mandatory…Stress is Optional

Below are some of the notes from a Change/Stress program I present. 

When the pain of what you are going through becomes greater than the fear of change, you change … but I recommend you avoid most of the pain, embrace the change and adjust.

Change Steps

KNOW
Know what’s coming — change is always coming.

FEEL
Feel your emotions — don’t stuff your feelings.

ADJUST
Adjust quickly and ask for help. Don’t wait — learn the new way, and realize that it takes more guts to ask for help than it does to think you don’t need any help!.
1. Expect change; it’s part of life. (Flexibility is the most valuable trait a human can have.)
2. Anticipate change. (Be prepared for it and acknowledge that you will be okay. Change is the most natural part of life and you are hereditarily conditioned to survive it and benefit from it.)
3. Keep an eye on change. (Take notes…and learn from them!)
4. Adapt quickly. (Get in front of the pack, let your emotions out, and then just do the next right thing that moves you toward changing.) Example: Crazy Stephanie and the pile of dishes – just pick up the first dish. There is only one way to start, and that is to start.
5. Enjoy the benefits of change. (“There is something better out there!” It will be better for all of us. It might not feel that way at first; you have to go through 3 inches of problem to get to 100 yards of solution.)

The Big 3: Top Reasons Organizations Change
1. To become more efficient
2. To deliver better service
3. To stay in business in tough times

Many times, it’s all three.

To successfully manage change, we must believe that every change in our lives frees us for a better opportunity, a chance to grow and thrive and move our lives forward — a chance to learn to be more efficient, which makes us more valuable to the organization and those we work with. Change can bring fear. We either move past it quickly or live in the fear until it becomes part of who we are. As humans we have changed when we needed to, and we’ve looked out for each other. We have a brain that allows us to switch our belief system to overcome our circumstances. We are not slaves to instinct. Seventy-five percent of all thoughts are negative, yet we use them to protect us and then move into a positive direction. That is what it is to be human and why we are in charge of the planet. They say dolphins and killer whales are smarter; however, they are not so quickly adaptable. There is no one in this room who works for a killer whale.
The No. 1 cause of stress is knowing exactly what you are supposed to be doing and consistently doing something else. That means change can cause stress, but it also means that stress is a lot about what we believe. It’s our interpretation of that change that ultimately causes us mental and even physical problems.
Stress Steps

IDENTIFY
Identify where the stress is coming from — pinpoint the specific source. (You’re not just overwhelmed. What are you specifically stressed about?)

CONTROL
Control what you can and let go of what you can’t. (Some things you cannot control; work on what you can. Break things into bite-sized pieces you can handle. The best way to get a hold of your life is to let go.)

CHOOSE
Choose to see the stress as a signal that how you feel about things is the source of the stress. (If you love change, then it’s not stressful.) Consider: People jump out of airplanes for fun, yet are hospitalized because of worry.

1. Manage your time well. (You have 1,444 minutes a day to spend as you choose. Create a priority list of what has to be done today; being prepared dramatically reduces stress.)
2. Be present in the moment. (You can’t live in the wreckage of the future. Stop and be where you are!)
3. Pick off the negotiables from your plate. (Review your daily and weekly activities to see what you can pick off your plate.)
4. Reduce your vulnerability to stress. (Make sleep a priority. Do things you love after work. Breathe deeply and realize there is a difference between caring and worrying.)
5. See through the stress and identify the truth. (It’s our personal feelings about an activity that make it stressful. The truth is that how we feel about things can make us sick. Stop worrying and start doing!)

Doing more with less and taking on new tasks is how the human race has survived and progressed. We need to increase our productivity to compete, and it can overwhelm us if we let it. The key phrase is “if we let it.” One person’s “overwhelming” is another person’s “in the zone.” When you are busy, time flies — even if you are busy doing stuff you don’t like. You may notice some people are just stressed out in general, and some are so laid back you accuse them of laziness. Your belief system creates your experience. But how can you change a belief? Ask your self these questions:

1. Does what you believe make your life better?
2. Is it possible that something you truly believe might not be true?
3. Is it possible for a fact to become untrue?
4. Does being stressed and overwhelmed benefit you in some way?

It’s impossible to get through those questions without realizing the power that human beings have to overcome their circumstances. And they overcome not only to survive change and stress but to actually thrive and become more creative. It’s a fact that war, tragedy and limited resources have produced more innovation than a pile of cash, a bunch of geniuses and unlimited time. Okay, killer whales and dolphins, follow that!!

Why Do I Have to Change If I’m Already Great?

We hear a lot about change these days. The discussion usually centers around how to get organizations to change, how to get departments to communicate more effectively with each other, or how to get people who’ve never been very – what’s the word I’m looking for? – skilled… to somehow manifest the will to get better at the exact moment it’s needed. (I’m pretty sure that’s the storyline of a few Disney movies.)

If we are honest with ourselves, it has been our experience that true personal change is not only hard, it’s downright rare. We have all heard that people never really change, so it’s built into our belief system that personal behavioral change is a bit of myth. Similarly, change within an organization poses distinct challenges. For instance, you can’t change a department or the whole company with just a better process or inspirational idea. For real change to happen, real people have to change.

Is Technology Killing Communication?

Recent research indicates that some of the main issues in sales and communications right now have emerged because people believe you can replace face-to-face (and voice-to-voice) communications with text, e-mail and social networking. These ways of interacting electronically obviously offer huge benefits and are no doubt part of the future, but they lack a personal element that offers a distinctive edge. For example, organizations that respond to Internet leads with a phone call have ten times the closing ratio of those who respond by e-mail (even when the leads come from people under 30 years of age). So if you are wondering why your sales are down and notice that your office is spooky quiet, now you have your answer. Technology is killing your communication!

Also, companies that have regular face-to-face meetings (like technology giants Google and Oracle, for example) are typically more successful than companies that choose to communicate through technology. Something we hear all the time in every industry is “We need to get everybody on the same page.” You’ll have more success doing that if you rely less on composing tweets or e-mails and pressing “Send.” That’s because only 2 percent of the population can write as well as they speak. So if you can’t follow this article so far, it’s not my brain that has the problem; it’s my writing style. Actually, I intentionally write on a seventh-grade level so I can be clear… and also because I lack the skill to write at an eighth-grade level. That’s also probably the reason why my book is selling well.

But let’s not peg all technological media advances as impersonal or ineffective or without the power to influence. Videoconferencing has huge benefits in terms of saving time and travel costs, and it’s crucial for meetings with faraway clients. Be clear, though, that if you were in the room with your audience, you would have much more influence and would take business away from the company that didn’t bother to show up. Think about it: If you texted (is that a word?) somebody 10 times and someone else had a five-minute conversation with that person, who do you think has more influence? Here’s a hint. It’s not you!

Although I have done presentations through videoconferencing, as a professional guest speaker I always have a live audience at the event and then shoot the video out to other locations. The live audience gives the remote attendees the feeling that they are actually present, and it allows me to feel like I’m not some guy alone in a room talking to a flat-screen monitor. My point is that throughout history we have always believed that we could replace human contact with technology. In the 1920s, we thought the telephone would stop people from ever meeting in person and the fax machine would mean that engineers and architects might never leave their offices. (That’s right – the fax machine was invented in 1918!) In the 19th century, we thought the telegraph would replace the mail. Can you believe that we still send paper stuffed in better paper around the world, to be delivered by people wearing shorts and safari helmets?

Technology seems to have limits when it comes to people getting personal. It seems that humans always keep hoping we can find a way to avoid each other and still communicate. The truth is that with all the technology humans have developed to keep us apart, we still just can’t get enough of each other!

Resources

Negotiating Change

Healthy and Unhealthy Fears – An Action Plan

To change from a victim into a volunteer we have to develop and implement an action plan that clearly educates people about the value of our product or service. One way we can do this is by becoming aware of our fears.

There are two kinds of fear healthy and unhealthy.

Some examples of healthy negotiating fears are:

  • “Am I adequately prepared for my meeting?”
  • “Do I know the right questions?”
  • “Do I know how to clearly explain the value of my product or service?”
  • “Is everyone on my team on the same page?”

Some examples of unhealthy negotiating fears are:

  • “Will looming changes in the market affect my ability to sell?”
  • “Are my negotiating skills hampered the way things have always been done around here?”

Fears that motivate us to prepare for success are good.

Fears that prevent us from coming up with creative solutions, and keep us in victim-hood have to go.

Realizing that we have no control over market changes or our clients’ reaction to it will automatically reduce our fear. To reduce it further we must enter our negotiations with a well-developed value proposition that both educates our clients as to the true value of our product or service and at the same time it relaxes us because we know we are prepared.