Category — High-impact communication

OK, that might be overselling it. But just a bit. It’s early in the morning and I needed to get your attention.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have a dream,” not “I have a plan.” That’s what caught MY attention about Simon Sinek’s TEDx talk.

Every expert on cross-cultural communication I’ve run across warns Westerners NOT to bow to their Asian friends and colleagues. It’s a deeply felt, nuanced form of communication in Asia. How low, how long, to whom – all are thickly layered with meaning. Westerners, the authorities warn, will simply never get it right. [Read more →]

“Dead man elected as mayor to oust unpopular woman.”

Morning paper (and tea)

This minor headline appeared on page 11 of today’s South China Morning Post, the English language newspaper that shows up in my hotel room. The article describes that a candidate for the office died of a heart attack a week before the election. He was, however, kept on the ballot by members of local government, who did not want the man’s female opponent to win. [Read more →]

I am constantly struck by the impact of real, specific, personal story.
Hong Kong Snapshot: Bathing Chester (and the power of story)
I am constantly struck by the power of real, specific, personal story. This week,I’m with fellow OYFer Brad Robertson in the utterly fascinating city of Hong Kong. We’re helping a client group with cross-cultural communication and influence – specifically, working with their Asian partners to more effectively communicate their depth of knowledge and expertise back to headquarters in North America. Perceived importance of hierarchy, status and power differences, 10,000 years of cultural grooving (on both sides), indirect vs. direct communication styles… as you might expect, a variety of drivers make this difficult.
So we knew going in that influence tools weren’t the only ingredients needed. At the end of the first day, we did a module on risk-taking. After a block of improv games (that required participants to take risks with each other right there in the room), we asked them to share the story of a time they, themselves, took a significant risk. What was the risk, and why did they take it? What happened? What did they learn?
The room grew soft with awe as participants from Korea, North America, Taiwan, Indonesia, China and elsewhere told their stories. One man quit his job and bicycled around the world. Another woman fell in love from a distance, and – stepping WAY outside traditional cultural norms – expressed her love with a heart-shaped sweet. And heard nothing. Several months later, seemingly out of the blue, the man she’d reached out to asked her to marry him. (They’ve now been married 10 years.) Another participant, so terrified of heights his entire life that he wouldn’t climb up on a table to change a lightbulb, went parasailing over 400 meters in the air. And then went again.
Across the room, people leaned toward each other, utterly engaged – laughing with recognition and grimacing with empathy. A new level of ease and comfort being open and vulnerable developed, becoming especially apparent the following day as they waded more deeply into the challenging waters of their real business issues and communication.
A story that stuck came from the Taiwanese father of a newborn, Chester. “I never thought I’d have children,” he said. “My friends still don’t believe it.” Bottom line: he was terrified of screwing it up. (How many parents around the world share that fear?) (How many parents are now considering naming their next child Chester? Is that adorable, or what?) “Before he was born, my wife took a series of classes for new parents. She was going by herself because I was scared that if I tried to care for the baby, I would break it. For some reason, I decided to go to the class on how to give a bath. I insisted on going alone to that particular class and when we brought Chester home, I was the one who bathed him. I was so scared. But it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever done. Now, the highlight of my every day is giving Chester his bath. I arrange my day so I am home in the evening to do that.”
“Bathing Chester” became symbolic, and we referred to this story many times. “Growth comes from risk,” as one person put it. “That’s the only way you can get to it. It doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from.”

Tip: One of our favorite group story forms is “Story Circle,” which we learned from the masterful Kat Koppett and use endlessly with a huge variety of groups. Her easy-to-follow instructions can be found in her valuable book, Training to Imagine.

What other ways of using story are you especially jazzed about? Do tell.

Ever start what begins as a reasonable political discussion with your parents… and 15 minutes later find yourself hip-deep in a mucky, confusing swirl, dreadfully off-topic and surprisingly upset?

This doesn’t just crop up at the dinner table, on the telephone, or with your family. Sometimes it happens smack in the middle of your team’s budget review.

I recently stumbled on a post that really got my attention, about people’s ability to hold a point of view – even when there’s strong evidence to contradict it. [Read more →]

Often, when I ask clients how they make decisions, I hear, “Oh, we mostly use consensus around here.”

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

Eight times out of ten, these are the same people who also note that group decisions often get reversed, people say one thing and then do another, or that their team spins and spins when they discuss potential decisions, investing loads of precious time but getting nowhere. What I often see is that “consensus” means a decision process that’s unclear or a wee bit sloppy, where the boss ended things with, “Oh, we’re out of time – but we’re all in agreement here, right?” But no one dug deeply for different points of view or concerns, let alone truly addressed them. [Read more →]

Imagine you have a colleague who gets all fired up around focusing more effectively on “the critical few.” He wants to clarify desired outcomes, delegate more, support small failures as learning, and challenge thought process and logic instead of details. Suppose he wisely recognizes that this behavior change will not only create value for his company, but will also unburden him personally, and have a pretty inspiring impact on his life outside work, too.

Now suppose he recognizes all this – can taste it, feel it, is deeply committed to changing his behavior – but when he gets to work Monday morning, he finds himself doing the opposite. Crum. He lets new opportunities distract him, accepts more responsibilities so he sacrifices non-work-related commitments, doesn’t ask for help, and doesn’t balance important, more strategic priorities with the urgent things that come flying at him. [Read more →]

Recently, we did some exciting work with James and Athena Pond, whose Transitions Global has done amazing work around the world helping teen victims of sex trafficking rebuild their lives. In light of the seriousness of their mission, the following warm-up exercise that we used might seem silly or trivial, but we found it to be as effective with this group as with others whose day-to-day work has very different stakes.

We wanted a simple but impactful experience that would quickly and stickily underscore obstacles to passing along a message consistently, even a simple one. Our choice: a game of “Physical Telephone,” where, instead of players transmitting a spoken message down a line of people, players are charged with passing along a set of gestures. [Read more →]

People always ask us for more examples of ways to show – vs. tell – the value of their idea or proposal. Of course they do! Because it’s much stickier and interesting if we ourselves “show” – vs. tell about – these. Here’s one that Alan Scott and his smart team at national consultancy Green Building Services came up with during a recent workshop. The team was working on a presentation about adopting green strategies for a large audience of school principals, administrators and School Board members.
[Read more →]