Archive for the ‘Negotiation Skills’ Category

No real difference between male and female brains for communication

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011
no-real-difference-between-male-and-female-brains-for-communication

I’ve always enjoyed reading Headlines – the national newsletter of the Neurological Foundation.  If you are interested in the brain, its worth donating to the Foundation  even just to get that newsletter. The latest issue has an very interesting article titled ‘The Brain – 10 Top Myths.  The myth  that relates most to communication is #10 Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. 

The author, Laura Helmuth, states categorically that there is very little difference between male and female brains, the few differences are minor and do not affect any ability. In fact she describes the ‘Men are from Mars’ view as: “Some of the sloppiest, shoddiest, most biased, least reproducible, worst designed and most over-interpreted research in the history of science…”  Now that’s telling us! And she’s no slouch – senior editor for the Smithsonian Magazine with a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from UCLA, Berkley.

Helmuth says that the research about gender differences of the ‘Men are from Mars’ variety are strongly influenced by the beliefs of the test subjects. So all that handy stuff around spatial ability, empathy, who talks most and  judging people’s emotions , does not relate to gender. Presumably socialisation has a big impact, but any gender differences are not due to the brain’s make-up.

When we are thinking about a communication challenge, don’t make excuses for the brain!  Here’s a link if you want to think about this similarity in the context of your love life. You can expect yourself to be able to  pick up on emotions plus shut up and listen – regardless of your gender.  Now where’s something else to blame?

The other nine myths?

  • We only use 10% of our brain:  WRONG
  • Snapshot memories are accurate: WRONG
  • Its all downhill as we age: WRONG
  • We have five senses: WRONG ( she mentions two other senses)
  • The brain is hard wired and can’t be altered: WRONG
  • A blow to the head can cause amnesia:WRONG
  • We know what will make us happy: WRONG
  • We see the world accurately:WRONG

Posted in Communication Tips, Conflict Resolution, Leadership, Negotiation Skills, Personal Presence, Relationship Management | 2 Comments »

Tips for training with a Webinar

Thursday, July 14th, 2011
tips-for-training-with-a-webinar

In my last blog I was facing the challenge of training by the webinar. I have survived and now I’m up to number 3.

Well actually it’s number 4 as I had to repeat the 2nd one due to ‘technical’ hitches. Only half of the participants were able to hear me which sort of defeats the purpose

So now I am feeling like I can pass on some of my tips and findings. I realise that 3 doesn’t make me an expert  however there has been some problems which we have overcome…and I’m sure you will find your own.

Tip number 1: Get organised well before you start. You need your water as you will get dry and if possible a ‘helper’ to pass the messages to you as they can come in thick and fast

Tip number 2:Rehearse out loud preferably with someone else.  They can do the timing  and give you feedback on whether you are getting your message across or not

Tip number 3:Be careful with colloquialisms. It’s quite difficult to explain when you have a short time to get through the material and you may be holding up the other participants.

Tip number4: Sound enthusiastic.It’s quite a challenge being excited in front of your laptop but it does sound a whole lot better that reading drone like from a script.

I think I’ve passed the first hurdles and can now discard my ‘training’ wheels and start to enjoy this new way (to me) of working with participants throughout the country

Posted in Communication Tips, Leadership, Negotiation Skills | No Comments »

Stepping outside your comfort zone

Monday, July 4th, 2011
stepping-outside-your-comfort-zone

Gosh things have changed when it comes to giving people information.

Years ago when we started Communicate Consultants we made sure our workshops were interactive with the learning taking place through discussion ,experiential exercises , practical work and not much lecture.

The key was face to face communication over a period of time usually one day. And it still is today.

However I am now embarking on an entirely new (to me ) way of running workshops. Webinars.

Talk about stepping outside your comfort zone and challenging your assumptions on how people can take in information.

Instead of reacting to the participants body language and facial expressions and adjusting the programme accordingly by stopping,asking questions and getting group involvement I am chatting to my laptop.

As much as I like my laptop it isn’t the most responsive of media and doesn’t get my jokes.

So I have had to adjust how I get the message across to the people on ‘the other side’.

It’s a bit like using your voice on the phone to sound excited,enthusiastic and engaging whilst seeing yourself on the camera (like Skype) and looking quite peculiar.

Questions pop up randomly which need answering but I can’t check they have understood or I’ve answered the question correctly.its a case of fingers crossed.

Tomorrow is my second webinar this time on Negotiations to IPENZ The Institute of Professional Engineers  www.ipenz.org.nz

So why do them?

The answer is its an efficient way to get a message across to people scattered over a large geographical area

Its quick -one hour to stimulate your participants to understand some principles and learn some new stuff

And for me it’s the chance to step outside my comfort zone and tackle a new skills-that’s got to be fun!

Posted in Communication Tips, Leadership, Negotiation Skills, Presentation skills, Public Speaking | No Comments »

The key to presence is being present

Friday, September 10th, 2010
the-key-to-presence-is-being-present

A common issue for our coaching clients in the past year has been the challenge of increasing the impact of their personal presence. Their  questions are often: ‘What is this ‘presence’  thing and how do I get more of it?’

While everyone needs to be aware of their personal presence, as we take on more influential leadership roles, we  need to be even  more conscious of establishing our presence.

 The key to it is simple…..or is it?

Seek first to understand

The message isn’t new:  Great personal presence requires us first to simply be present to others – by listening to them very carefully. Steven Covey sums it up well with his quote: ‘Seek first to understand before being understood.’

This seems very straightforward, but most of us tend to go into conversations focused much more on our own point of view – what we find interesting, what we want to talk about and so on.  This approach certainly establishes presence, but of the wrong sort!  To develop a strong positive presence, we need to focus first on understanding where the other person is coming from in the conversation.  

 Active listening is the key communication tool for keeping ourselves present.  There’s a challenge though, because while listening appears to be simple, it isn’t often easy.  The process requires commitment and real discipline of our conscious thought. Sometimes we have to keep repeating to ourselves: ‘I really want to listen to this person.’  When we manage to focus in this way, we are truly present. There is a very powerful story that captures the magic of this combination in The Power of Presence and Listening: A Fellow’s Narrative by Musharraf Navaid MD, in the Journal of Palliative Medicine.

Posted in Communication Tips, Community involvement, Effective Meetings, Leadership, Negotiation Skills, Personal Presence, Presentation skills, Public Speaking, Relationship Management, Speeches | No Comments »

Should you trust your intuition?

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
should-you-trust-your-intuition

Recently a client was in a final interview and planning to make a senior  job offer to a highly suitable candidate.  Everything appeared to be going well, except that my client suddenly  became aware of a growing sense of uneasiness about the preferred candidate.

Follow up on that intuition

 They had conducted extensive interviews with the person; the referees were all glowing; when my client checked back with the rest of the recruitment panel they couldn’t understand his sudden wariness…but unease it was. Should he insist on pulling back, when up till then everything had checked out well; or should he trust their thorough process?

We discussed what had  happened at the two or three points when he got his gut feel. The comments were: ‘Oh, there was some  slightly negative body language in the candidate that didn’t align with what was being said…nothing much really…’  ‘Later on, I guess I just wondered whether the candidate would be as committed as we thought.  I don’t know why’  

We could call that unease ‘intuition’, but was it?  Gut feel or whatever you call it, I have learnt in positive and negative ways the value of trusting it.  Some years ago a searing recruitment experience decided me that if I ever felt a deep unease that didn’t relate to the evidence, I would at least carefully follow up on that unease.  In my coaching of a very wide range of people, I have found awareness of my intuition to be a very reliable indicator of what is really going on.

 I am very suspicious of ethereal versions of ‘intuition’.  I suspect so-called ‘intuition is just a bunch of minute clues that only we pick up subconsciously – then they build until we notice them as intuition. For more explanation of this, check out: Lifehack.  

If we define intuition as ‘perceptive insight’,  there some useful things for a practical person to tune into:

  1. In an intense discussion, we unconsciously pick up very subtle changes in facial expression, skin colouration and nuance of tone.  These are only minute clues until they cluster around a stronger general impression that we then experience as ‘unease’.  Don’t jump to conclusions, but trust the feeling and follow up on your concerns.
  2. When you notice a gap between the message communicated in the body language and the message in the words, look carefully at that gap. There are a lot of unsubstantiated claims about the messaging in body language, but research warns us to be alert around this type of misalignment.
  3. We also bring to the communication our experience in similar situations.  A relevant but past experience might be almost forgotten yet still trigger an alarm bells in the present. When we think about it afterwards, we will usually remember exactly what that experience was…and its lesson!

Obviously you have to observe the other person very carefully. The weird thing is though, that  to develop your perceptive insight, you have to listen very carefully to yourself.  Be  very alert to your own reactions.  Trust them. Don’t jump to conclusions, but do follow up on your instinct, by asking questions.

 There are some really good tips on listening to your own awareness at a blog with the appealing name of: hellomynameisblog  

So what happened in client’s case?   He decided to insist that the panel take the time to check up on his concerns. Having taken legal advice, they went back to the referees and that turned out to be a very good move.  Put briefly: They re-advertised!

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Posted in Communication Tips, Conflict Resolution, Effective Meetings, Leadership, Negotiation Skills, Personal Presence, Relationship Management | 1 Comment »