Flourishing

Saving the New Year - Megan McArdle

2011-12-28T11:30:00.001-05:00

This post by Megan McArdle doesn't at first glance appear to fall in the category of self-development and yet I feel it's worth sharing for her basic advice.

Saving the New Year - Megan McArdle - Business - The Atlantic

The important thing is to pay yourself first. Savings should be the first thing you do, not the last. After you've saved, then you budget your consumption. I won't tell you what to cut, because when you confront your new, slightly leaner budget, you'll be perfectly able to calculate what's no longer worth the money to you. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised to find that after a few weeks or a few months of initial pinch, you won't remember that you miss the money much.

Practical Wisdom: The Master Virtue | The Art of Manliness

2011-12-24T11:43:00.000-05:00

This article nicely handles the subject of practical wisdom.

Practical Wisdom: The Master Virtue | The Art of Manliness

Willpower

2011-11-14T12:00:00.000-05:00

This article in the Boston Globe nicely summarizes a book I just finished reading, Willpower: Rediscovering The Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney.

He and others have also identified a host of things that can drain our willpower, including hunger and fatigue, while neuroscientists are struggling to understand exactly how the brain’s higher reasoning center - the prefrontal cortex - manages conflicting wants and needs to help us make the right decisions. The reason for all this interest? Willpower, it turns out, is one of the most important predictors of success in life.

I found this book interesting because it says something different from the self-help books I’ve recently read. Several books I’ve read talk about making change easier by offering tricks, tips and tactics to accomplish the desired change. However these books don’t explicitly say that you still need to by exert willpower to initiate whatever actions you do take. Applying their tips still starts with a decision to do something and the will to actually do it enough to see a change.

Video Critique: Steve Jobs (Stanford Commencement, 2005) Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

2011-11-10T15:49:00.000-05:00

Because I give many presentations as part of my job I've read a number of books extolling Steve Job's style, and rightfully so. Here is an interesting critique.

Video Critique: Steve Jobs (Stanford Commencement, 2005) Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

Winning Body Language Review

2011-07-17T12:59:00.000-04:00

I've read a number of books on body language so when I started to read Winning Body Language I expected just more of the same. I was wrong. Mark Bowden, author of Winning Body Language, offers some different advice than the usual based on his own approach called the TruthPlane.

Bowden divides our body into different planes, each of which is best suited for different kinds of communication. For most presentations (and communication) Bowden recommends that our gestures stay in the TruthPlane, the horizontal plane extending from the navel.

If you can concentrate on sending out nonverbal messages that are easy for the receiver to interpret correctly – clearly coded, with congruent images and sound – then the audience’s brains stand a far greater chance of relaxing and getting your meaning in the way you intended.

The navel is indeed the control center of your physical balance and the center of your biological mechanism for coping with stress.

Placing your hands in the TruthPlane is the single most effective way for the business communicator to fight back effortlessly against the natural stress reaction and send out a clear signal to the audience that there is no problem.

While most of our gestures would occur in the TruthPlane Bowden also proposes other planes: PassionPlane at chest level for adding excitement, DisclosurePlane at the mouth level, ThoughtPlane (eye level) and EsctaticPlane (above the head).

All of these planes can be used at appropriate times while there is one plane, the GrotesquePlane (below waist level), where he says we should avoid placing our hands. Bowden claims this lowers energy. This contradicts advice I've seen in a couple other nooks which recommend dropping your hands to your sides when not gesturing. As a test I've paid attention to TV hosts who don't work behind a desk, politicians and actors. Many of them gesture mostly in the TruthPlane. I don't know if they were trained to do this or if they just do it subconsciously but my informal survey showed that many people use Bowden's TruthPlane.

He also suggests we use symmetrical gestures to make your message easier to process.

For a message that you send to stand the optimum chance of being interpreted correctly by the audience, it must be taken in coherently by both the left brain’s linguistic logic and the right brain’s nonverbal image processor. This means gesturing with more symmetry between the left side and the right side of the body.

Winning Body Language covers more than just giving presentations. It also talks about how to establish your territory in a room, how to break down barriers to communication and how to structure a presentation. While all of this information is good and useful I found the TruthPlane concept, the core of Winning Body Language, the part I apply the most. And that's the plane truth about the TruthPlane.

A Loser's Winning Moment by Jason Gay

2011-07-06T13:04:00.000-04:00

I like this article on the Nadal-Djokovic Wimbledon final. After his introduction which says how easy it is to handle winning Gay says: "But do you really want to prove yourself, to be all-time and great? Learn to lose. Lose beautifully, with class and humility. Lose like Rafael Nadal."

Further on he says:

One of the great aspects of the Nadal-Federer era is that it demolished the myth that nice guys finish last. This isn't to say the rivals don't possess bountiful egos—they do—but there has been an encouraging layer of generosity and civility to the competition. It's a little pathetic how refreshing this is. Too often, antisocial behavior in sports is excused as a side effect of championship determination.

I agree. This was one of the things that bothered me when the Williams sisters were dominating woman's tennis. When they lost they often didn't give credit to the play of their opponent. I remember seeing at least one victory speech in which one of the Williams didn't even acknowledge their opponent. I have to say that this was several years ago. I was pleasantly surprised more recently when Serena graciously handled a loss.

I'm not saying we should like losing. I certainly am not happy when I lose a tennis match. But there is nothing to be gained by belittling your partner or concocting an excuse for losing. If my goal is to improve (which it is) it won't help my effort if I deny why I lost. I'm preventing learning important lessons that could help me play better. And I also do believe my opponent is a partner at least at the level of social sports which for most of us is what we're engaged in. We're not earning our living, landing endorsement deals or vying for trophies when we play sports with friends and colleagues. This is why I used the word "partner" earlier in this paragraph. We're testing each other, partly in order to grow and improve while also enjoying the battle. The fact that Nadal, Federer and others can handle losing as well as they do supports the sentiment expressed in the first quote from Gay.

Healthy Mind Platter

2011-06-16T19:25:00.000-04:00

Siegel offers a somewhat different model than others. Other self-help authors talk about balancing different aspects of our external life: work, family, health, and etc. His turns the focus inwards towards what it takes to keep our brains healthy. Here is a summary from Siegel’s web site of the different dishes on the platter.

Focus Time: When we closely focus on tasks in a goal-oriented way, we take on challenges that make deep connections in the brain.

Play Time: When we allow ourselves to be spontaneous or creative, playfully enjoying novel experiences, we help make new connections in the brain.

Connecting Time: When we connect with other people, ideally in person, and when we take time to appreciate our connection to the natural world around us, we activate and reinforce the brain's relational circuitry.

Physical Time: When we move our bodies, especially aerobically, we strengthen the brain in many ways.

Time In: When we quietly reflect internally, focusing on sensations, images, feelings and thoughts, we help to better integrate the brain.

Down Time: When we are non-focused, without any specific goal, and let our mind wander or simply relax, we help the brain recharge.

Sleep Time: When we give the brain the rest it needs, we consolidate learning and recover from the experiences of the day.

Bounce, Clutch and Choke: Reviews

2011-02-07T20:40:00.005-05:00

Why do some people perform well under pressure while others don’t? Why do some bounce back from adversity or come through in a clutch while others choke? That is the subject of three books, each of which tackles the subject from a different angle. Each author has different credentials as well.

The books are:

Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To by Sian Bielock

Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success by Matthew Syed

Clutch: Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Other Don't by Paul Sullivan

Sian Bielock is a professor who conducts research in this field. Matthew Syed, the author of Bounce, writes for The Times of London, is a commentator for the BBC and was three time Commonwealth table tennis champion and a two-time Olympian. Syed can speak from direct experience about performing under pressure. Paul Sullivan writes “Wealth Matters” column for The New York Times. So you have someone whose career studies performance, someone who performing at the world class level of table tennis and a financial columnist. As you can imagine each one looks at this issue a bit different and each author finds different reasons why we come through in a clutch or choke.

Bielock concludes that practicing under pressure enhances performance, even cognitive performance. She tells us the ability to control our thoughts and images play a crucial role. Bielock lists several tips to help us prevent choking such as reaffirming our self-worth, meditating, pausing before acting and reinterpreting our reactions. As an example of this last tip she encourages us to reframe a reaction such as “I am freaking out” about facing a challenge to “I am pumped for this test!”

Bounce also talks about the importance of practice. Syed draws on the research of Anders Ericsson, psychologist at Florida State University, who coined the term “deliberate practice.” Ericsson noticed that world class performers practiced in a different way than others. “When most people practice, they focus on the things they can do effortlessly. Expert practice is different. It entails considerable, specific, and sustained efforts to do something you can’t do well – or even at all. Research across domains shows that it is only by working at what you can’t do that you turn into the expert you want to become.” Syed calls it purposeful practice. Why? “Because the practice sessions of aspiring champions have a specific and never-changing purpose: progress. World-class performance comes by striving for a target just out of reach, but with a vivid awareness of how the gap might be breached.”

This emphasis on purposeful or deliberate practice parallels Bielock’s recommendation to practice under pressure.

Bounce also ties in works I’ve reviewed here: Colvin’s Talent is Overrated, Coyle’s The Talent Code and Dweck’s Mindset.

Syed introduces another term as well: doublethink. Unlike many writers who urge us to focus only on the positive, Syed tells us we need both positive and negative thoughts. We need a positive focus to protect our self-belief while also noting our weaknesses that need to be improved.

He also explains how our brain has explicit and implicit systems. When we learn a new skill we operate on the explicit, conscious level. As we become proficient and develop mastery of a skill the brain hands over the performance to our implicit, subconscious system. It takes thousands of hours of purposeful practice to cement a skill into an unconscious mode. We choke when under the intense light of pressure we try to push the skill back into the explicit, inherently slower and more error prone system. As soon as we start to try to consciously control something we had automatized we run into trouble and can choke. Golfers call this a case of the "yips."

Sullivan’s Clutch draws some general conclusions by using examples of high performers in various fields. He believes people who choke share three traits: 1. They don’t take responsibility for choking, 2.They over think what they’re doing, and, 3. They fool themselves with overconfidence.

He then identifies five key traits of people who perform well: focus, discipline, adaptability, presence and being motivated by fear and desire. Sullivan’s last trait is similar to Syed’s recommendation to properly use both positive and negative thoughts.

So where does all of this leave us? Each book lays out somewhat different approaches. Are there common denominators? I think there are. While none of the ideas appeared in all three books there were several that popped up in two of them.

Practicing purposefully and under pressure.
Proper use of positive and negative thinking.
Being fully in the present while performing. This allows us to focus on the outcome instead of worrying about how we going to get to our goal. However we need to sharply focus on technique during purposeful practice. The combination of these ideas helps us avoid over thinking and overconfidence.
We need to be adaptable and use judgment when applying our principles.
When performing we can lessen the pressure by telling ourselves we’re not, say, serving for the winning game of the U.S. Open. We’re just serving any other game.

If forced to choose one of these books it would be a tough one but I’d lean towards Bielock’s Choke. I’d do so partly because her career is dedicated to learning why some people choke and why others don’t and because she offers more practical tips. Having said that any one of these books will help learn how to perform under pressure.

FIVE TIPS FOR (FINALLY) GETTING YOUR NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTION RIGHT by Dan and Chip Heath

2010-12-29T10:21:00.007-05:00

The Heath brothers apply the principles spelled out in their book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, to keeping New Year's Resolutions. Check out their latest newsletter.

The five tips are listed below. The newsletter expands on each tip.

1. Don't be ambitious.

2. Watch for bright spots.

3. Make simple tweaks in your environment.

4. Rely on planning, not willpower.

5. Publicize your resolution.

Choke: What The Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To - A review

2010-11-06T14:51:00.007-04:00

Have you ever choked? Double faulted a key serve in a tennis match? Muffed an easy three-foot putt? Froze during an important presentation to a key client? If you like most people you could say yes to one of these answers. However, we know some people who don’t choke, who stay cool under the heat of pressure. Is there something they do differently than us? Do we do something different when we’re under pressure than we do when there is no pressure? This is what Sian Beilock, associate professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Chicago, tries to answer in her book, Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To.

Beilock starts off by making a key distinction. “Choking is not simply poor performance, however. Choking is suboptimal performance. It’s when you – or an individual athlete, actor, musician, or student – perform worse than expected given what you are capable of doing.”

Like a number of recent books Choke relies on research on how the brain works using the latest imaging technology, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The fMRI can’t read what is happening within individual neurons and synapses. It measures blood flow which is related to brain activity and identifies which parts of the brain light up when we’re stressed as opposed to when we’re not.

Beilock explains that understanding how and why we choke relies on knowing how our procedural memory works which “is implicit or unconscious. … You can think of procedural memory as your cognitive toolbox that contains a recipe that, if followed, will produce a successful bike ride, golf putt, baseball swing, or fully operating cell phone.” When we take on a new skill we start off consciously learning the key motions. As we become more proficient the details of the mechanics of technique our brain hands off executing these techniques from the conscious to the unconscious or our procedural memory. As a result once we become proficient in a skill our performance actually declines if we usurp our procedural memory by consciously trying to control our action.

This is what happens when we choke. We start to think about the technique of our serve and double fault. Or we start thinking about the mechanics of putting only to push the putt wide when we normally would make easily when there is no pressure. Instead of letting our subconscious execute the shot or the putt we try to steer it consciously only to choke.

When we become too conscious of how we doing something we also use up our working-memory which “involves the ability to hold information in mind (and protect that information from disappearing) while doing something else at the same time.”

So what can we do to lower our chances of choking? Are there ways of keeping us engaged with our procedural memory and not sucking up the precious resources of our working-memory? Beilock provides research showing that practicing that adds pressure similar to what you’d experience during competition will help. “Practice can actually change the physical wiring of the brain to support exceptional performance.” This also shows that we’re not stuck with a set amount of working-memory. We can expand it with the right kind of practice.

Another tactic would be to reinterpret your body’s response to a tense situation. Instead of thinking “I don’t handle pressure well. I’m tight and might make a mistake” you would say to yourself “I’m excited about facing this challenge.”

Beilock offers some other tips as well. These include taking time before starting the activity to reaffirm your self-worth by taking a few minutes to write about your many interests and activities. Map out your complexities: draw a diagram of what makes you a multi-faceted person. Meditate. And perhaps the most counter-intuitive tip: write about your worries. You would think we should not focus on what worries us but Beilock’s research shows that writing out your worries actually helps to relieve them!

All of this is fine for athletics but what about preventing choking in business or other non-sport activities? Some of Beilock’s tips are the essentially the same: meditate, write down thoughts you want to avoid, focus on a three strong talking points and think about the journey, not the outcome.

For interviews work up “a few well-rehearsed sentences about why you are the right person for the job, this first impression can help set the tone for your interview and for what is taken away from the meeting. … Providing a schema for interpreting a meeting at the outset, then, can help guide others’ memory of you.” I’d say this approach also works for presentations.

Beilock admits that brain research is fairly young and that future research might reveal more strategies for dealing with choking. Nonetheless Choke offers some good suggestions to ensure we don’t choke.

Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard - Review

2010-06-02T21:33:00.006-04:00

The Heath brothers did it again. Earlier I reviewed their book Made To Stick dealing with how to create memorable messages. It stuck with me, becoming one of my favorites because the Heaths have the ability to condense their massive research into easy-to-remember principles. In Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard they’ve aimed their same approach at change. Specifically, how do we change things in our lives? Almost all of us have tried to change something in our lives. Losing weight. Getting into better shape. Not procrastinating. But many of us even if we change we often slip back into our former habits. Why? Is there a way we can follow to increase the stickiness of change? The Heath brothers say there is.

The Heaths observe: “All change efforts have something in common: For anything to change, someone has to start acting differently. … successful changes share a common pattern.”

Before getting into the details of this common pattern Chip and Dan first tackle the nature of the key element of change: our brains. They rely on the work of Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis (reviewed here). Haidt’s research lead him to conclude that the emotional side of our brain is like an Elephant while our rational side is similar to a Rider who tries to rein in the elephant and seems to be the leader. However the Rider’s ability to control the elephant is tenuous because the Rider is so small relative to the Elephant. The roots of our emotional mechanism are deep in our ancestry while the rational part of our brain evolved only recently in terms of our total history.

The Heaths go on to say the Elephant often wants a quick payoff with minimal effort while the Rider plans for the future. “When change efforts fail, it’s usually the Elephant’s fault, since the kinds of change we want typically involve short-term sacrifices for long-term payoffs.” This ties into their advice later in the book.

The Heaths’ reach three conclusions about trying to switch using sheer will power and self-control.

“Self-control is an exhaustible resource.” Meaning, our Elephant can wear out our limited supply of self-control.
“What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.” When we give up we might write it off as being just lazy when we’re really wearing ourselves out.
“What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.” If we don’t have a clearly defined and visualized end point we won’t know our ultimate goal.

These conclusions lead to their framework for change.

“Direct the Rider. What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity. So provide crystal-clear direction.”
“Motivate the Elephant. What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. … So it’s critical that you engage people’s emotional side – get their Elephants on the path and cooperative.”
“Shape the Path. What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. … When you shape the Path, you make change more likely, no matter what’s happening with the Rider and Elephant.”

For each of these parts of the framework Switch lays out advice on how to accomplish them. For instance, in directing the rider we can find the bright spots to help our motivation, script the critical moves to clearly define key steps and point to the destination. To motivate the elephant we find the feeling associated with our goals, find ways to shrink the change to make them less daunting and, for managers and leaders, help your people grow. (This ties into having a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset.) To shape the path we can tweak our environment, build habits and rally the herd.

Once we follow the path laid out by the Heaths they tell us how the “keep the switch going.” They point out that we use a positive approach instead of punishment, citing the results of animal trainers who “set a behavioral destination and then use ‘approximations,’ meaning that they reward each tiny step toward the destination. … We need to be looking for bright spots – however tiny! – and rewarding them.”

Ultimately Switch shows that there is a lot more to changing than sheer will power and repeating positive affirmations. Change requires a variety of tools and techniques that help the Rider chart a course and keep the Elephant reasonably in line.

Bottom line: I highly recommend Switch. Following it advice will help make change easier when change is hard.

Off Balance On Purpose - review

2010-01-10T15:06:00.004-05:00

Over the years I’ve been an advocate of trying to live in balance. Dan Thurmon in his book Off Balance on Purpose: Embrace Uncertainty and Create a Life You Love claims that searching for balance is futile and ultimately undesirable. Why? Because Thurmon contends achieving balance is impossible. He uses a number of metaphors hinging on circus entertainment: the tightrope walker, the juggler and the unicyclist. In all cases he points out that balance ultimately produces stagnation because balancing doesn’t create forward movement, only swinging movements through a center point.

While we could quibble whether there is a difference between balancing that is static versus dynamic I think Thurmon ultimately makes a valid point. I like his observation how jugglers look up at their target rather than looking down at the feet or how tightrope walkers look at their destination, not down at their feet.

“Keep looking up” is a mantra that reminds us to rise above the outward distractions and imposed definitions of what is important and decide for ourselves what really matters.

…

Your pattern is driven by your purpose. … [r]emember that jugglers don’t look at their hands. They look up at their targets. Only by looking up and taking in the full magnitude of what is happening in your life can you being to grasp the pattern and see your purpose.

Thurmon’s book doesn’t hang just on where we focus our attention but also on “letting go”.

Successful people (and expert jugglers) shift their focus and energy from one action to the next, disengaging from the objectives that are, for the time being, beyond their immediate grasp or control.

The center portion of the book relies on juggling as the main metaphor. In this case we’re juggling the five spheres of our life: work, relationships, health, spiritual growth and personal interests. After explaining the various relationships between two of each of these spheres Thurmon proceeds to give ideas how to achieve progress in more than one area at the same time.

In each sphere Thurmon poses several questions to help you focus on what is important in each. He then offers ideas for strengthening the relationships in each pair of spheres. For instance, work-relationships, work-health, work spiritual growth, work-personal interests, relationships-health, relationships-spiritual growth, relationships-personal interests, health-spiritual growth, health-personal interests, and spiritual growth-personal interests.

Once these relationships are identified Thurmon suggests how we can recognize potential collisions between these spheres as we’re juggling them. They are:

Identify and remove what doesn’t fit.

Calibrate your instruments.

Reduce clutter.

The success I am talking about … is multidimensional. It is state of being. A complete success spans the five spheres: work, relationships, health, spiritual growth, and personal interests. These are all wrapped into one exquisite work of art called ‘your life.” … To do this, you have to look up, just like an expert juggler does, and see the big picture. … True satisfaction and life enjoyment can come only from making forward progress in all of these areas.

You are here because of your past choices and actions.

The past is over.

You control what happens next.

In the final section Thurmon switches to the unicycle to make the point about idling in which the rider maintains balance by pedaling back and forth on one spot. To more forward the unicyclist has to lean forward. The key to making progress without falling on your face is to find the right amount of lean. This ties into the concept “flow” that I’ve mentioned before: by challenging yourself you grow while becoming absorbed. The key is to find a “balance” between your abilities and the challenge. If the challenge is too low boredom sets in while a challenge that is too high for our abilities creates anxiety.

This tends to support the point I made at the beginning about dynamic balancing, which results from forward movement, versus static balancing. Overall I agree with Thurmon’s analogy of juggling the five areas of life (work, relationships, health, spiritual growth and personal interests) versus balancing just the work and personal aspects.

Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life - Review

2009-11-19T19:58:00.004-05:00

Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life

The designers of the book cover knew what they were doing. The jacket is a bright yellow with just the word “Curious?” on the front. It worked. I saw the book in the Self-Development section of Barnes and Noble, picked up the book and opened the table of contents. It is subtitled, Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life. A bold claim. One that for the most part holds up, although I’d modify the author’s claim somewhat.

Todd Kashdan, a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at George Mason University, says: “My aim in writing this book is to affect you in two ways. First, by showing you how and why curious exploration is integral to a well-lived life. Second, by providing clear strategies for you to become a curious explorer and to extract greater pleasure and meaning from all of life’s moments and to invest in lasting passions and fulfillment.”

Curious? ties to the previous review I wrote of Mindset in which the author distinguishes between the growth and fixed mindsets and Rapt which holds that “Skillful management of attention is the sine qua non of the good life” and “You cannot always be happy, but you can almost always be focused, which is the next best thing.” I can see that being curious relates to these other concepts. If we have a growth oriented mindset and we’re able to manage our mind’s attention we are also more likely to employ an open curious approach. Our ability to manage our attention to live a fulfilled life. Being rapt entails being engaged and curious.

Overall I feel the author oversells a bit about the role of being curious. Kashdan implicitly admits this because he touches on the importance of mindfulness. I think one way of keeping the key concepts that the books I mentioned above, including Curious?, is to use this acronym: COME – Curiosity, Objectivity, Mindfulness and Engaged.

Still I recommend Curious? because it does identify a new aspect to living well.

The Power Presenter Review

2009-08-15T21:35:00.004-04:00

In earlier reviews I’ve recommended Jerry Weissman’s earlier two books, Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story, Updated and Expanded Edition and In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions...When It Counts. Presenting To Win shows how to structure and design presentations while In The Line of Fire gives advice on how to handle tough questions and answers. His new book, The Power Presenter: Technique, Style, and Strategy from America's Top Speaking Coach, fills a gap between the first two books: how to actually deliver the presentation. Like the first two books, Weissman’s latest is a worthy addition.

The Power Presenter offers advice I have not seen elsewhere. Most noteworthy is his recommendation for the presenter to think about how the audience is doing to shift the natural focus away from the “How am I doing?” concern that bedevils most presenters. While Presenting To Win talked about designing your presentation by constantly thinking how your presentation will benefit your audience, The Power Presenter tells the presenter to continuously ask how your audience is doing to counter-act the normal concern about how you, the presenter, are doing. This differs from the usual recommended solutions such as visualizing your audience naked or other tricks to distract you away from being concerned about how you are doing.

The Power Presenter also gives unique advice regarding eye contact and the use of pauses. Weissman tells us to make eye contact with one person in the audience, deliver an entire thought to that person, pause while moving on to another person in the audience then deliver a full thought to the new recipient. He contends this approach converts your presentation into a number of one-on-one conversations with the pauses allowing the audience to absorb your points while you take time to formulate your next thought. I haven’t tested this idea yet but I can see how this will make a presenter look confident. I definitely will apply Weissman’s ideas.

Weissman also takes a different approach on a key question every presenter asks: What do I do with my hands? The current thinking, based on a presentation skills class I took at work and observing TV personalities, is to hold your hands together at waist level in front of our body. Weissman instructs us to let our hands drop at our sides in a “touch-and-go position”. This means you drop your hands for an instant, gesture with one or both hands then drop back to the rest position. He claims this method provides several benefits. First, your hands have to travel a longer distance which makes your gestures more pronounced. Second, dropping your hands avoids the hunching of the shoulders produced by the “body wrap position”. Plus there are other benefits. And third, it opens your body to the audience, showing your confidence to face them openly as opposed to protecting your midsection with your arms.

I do want to comment that Weissman never says how he concluded why certain behaviors or gestures work. Is it based on empirical research? His own personal testing? He doesn’t say. His ideas make sense but I find his silence on this subject interesting.

I’m looking forward to using Weissman’s ideas. I’m sure they work if for no other reason than the impressive list of clients Weissman says he has worked with over the years.

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life by Winifred Gallager - Review

2009-07-02T21:17:00.013-04:00

Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life has a fairly simple premise that is revealed in the book’s subtitle: the quality of your life depends on what you pay attention to. Sounds pretty obvious, doesn't it? But there is more than meets the eye.

Gallager claims that: “Skillful management of attention is the sine qua non of the good life and the key to improving virtually every aspect of your experience, from mood to productivity to relationships.”

And,

If you could just stay focused on the right things, your life would stop feeling like a reaction to stuff that happens to you and become something that you create: not a series of accidents, but a work of art.

A hidden lies behind this approach. While you cannot control whether you’ll always be happy, due to circumstance beyond your control, you can choose to be focused, which Gallager says, “is the next best thing.”

Paying attention doesn’t mean just focusing on the external world but also to your internal world, in particular to positive emotions which “literally expands your world, while focusing on negative feelings shrinks it.”

Paying attention also doesn’t consist just of sitting “rapt” on nothing particular. Gallager incorporates the concept “flow”, originally identified by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, in which the challenge we tackle stretches us a bit. If the task is too easy we drift into boredom; too challenging and we start to feel anxiety. Csikszenmihalyi’s research into rock climbers, artists, etc. found that people found flow when they became absorbed in their work, losing sense of time and even of self.

To live a life filled with raptness Gallager recommends: “The antidote to leisure-time ennui is to pay as much attention to scheduling a productive evening or weekend as you do to your workday.”

Over time, a commitment to challenging, focused work and leisure produces not only better daily experience, but also a more complex, interesting person: the long-range benefit of the focused life.

Recently I reviewed the book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. I believe there is a natural connection between the two approaches. We can strive to be rapt as much as we want but I think our efforts will be thwarted if we have what Dweck calls a “fixed” mindset, the belief that we are saddled with innate talents with little room for development. I think this mindset will make it more difficult to slide into raptness because we’ll be too concerned about avoiding challenges, one of Dweck’s findings about the consequence of having a fixed mindset. People with a fixed mindset fear taking on challenges because should they fail it would reveal that maybe their innate talent isn’t as deep or as strong as they believe. And, having a fixed mindset means they can’t do anything about it!

A person with a growth mindset, on the other hand, believes they can improve and therefore will look for challenges that lead to raptness.

(Just this week I also picked up another book in the same vein: Curious?: Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life by Todd Kashdan. It will be interesting to see how his ideas mesh with Gallager’s and Dweck’s. Stay tuned!)

Overall, I highly recommend Rapt. It deserves your focused attention.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success - Review

2009-06-27T22:07:00.005-04:00

Do you believe you are born with certain innate talents that can't be changed? Or do you believe your intelligence and other traits can be developed? According to Carol Dweck, Lewis and Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success the first conclusion represents a "fixed" mindset while the second shows a "growth" mindset.

This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. … [T]hey believe that a person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.

So what difference does it make if you have a growth versus a fixed mindset? A lot. People who believe growth is possible will “value of challenging themselves and the importance of effort. Our research has shown that this comes directly from the growth mindset. When we teach people the growth mindset, with its focus on development, these ideas about challenge and effort follow. … When we (temporarily) put people in a fixed mindset, with its focus on permanent traits, they quickly fear challenge and devalue effort.”

In addition Dweck claims growth minded people will also be more honest about their weaknesses and failures because this provides valuable information growers can use to improve themselves. Those with a fixed belief will not be as honest about their mistakes because everything hinges on outcome and validation. Failures thus reflect negatively on -- and possibly undercut -- your innate abilities. She cites examples from business such as Enron whose top leadership exemplified the fixed mindset versus other companies whose leaders are guided by a growth-oriented mentality.

In one world – the world of fixed traits – success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other – the world of changing qualities – it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.

So how do these conclusions apply in the real world? At work, for example, “Instead of just giving employees an award for the smartest idea or praise for a brilliant performance, they would get praise for taking imitative, for seeing a difficult task through, for struggling and learning something new, for being undaunted by a setback, or for being open to and acting on criticism.”

In relationships, fixed mindsetters believe problems have no cure because change isn’t possible for either party. The only recourse is to place blame or plot revenge. For growth mindsetters, “it was about understanding, forgiving, and moving on.” They still feel pain but not humiliation, the hallmark emotion for someone with a fixed mindset.

For parents Dweck says they can best help their children by teaching them “to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don’t have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence.”

Fixed mindset parents, on the other hand, send a different message to their kids. “’We love you – on our terms’ Those with the fixed mindset feel their parents won’t love and respect them unless they fulfill their parents’ aspirations for them.”

Dweck also comments on the ill-advised attempts to help raise grades, test scores and self-esteem by lowering standards. She feels this approach back fires because it ”just leads to poorly educated students who feel entitled to easy work.” Amen to that! Dweck also sites Benjamin Bloom’s study of world-class performers which revealed, “their first teachers were incredibly warm and accepting. Not that they set low standards. Not at all, but they created an atmosphere of trust, not judgment.”

Because the growth mindset accepts the idea of continual improvement coaches like basketball’s John Wooden strive to help their players to improve through constant preparation with focused effort. As Wooden explains: “You have to apply yourself each day to becoming a little better. By applying yourself to the task of becoming a little better each and every day over a period of time, you will become a lot better.”

Or, as Dweck says: “As parents, teachers, and coaches, our mission is developing people’s potential.” You can’t develop talent if you believe your players, kids or employees have a fixed, unchangeable nature.

As you can tell I liked Mindset. I know reviewers are supposed to find something to criticize and I’m sure I’d find something if I looked long enough. However I believe Dweck’s distinction between growth and fixed mindsets provides a key concept that explains many things about how people act and relate to each other. It also gives us invaluable assistance to improve how we work, relate, parent, coach and grow.

The Talent Code Review

2009-06-23T17:47:00.004-04:00

Why do some people excel in their fields while others struggle or stagnate? Is it their genes? Their upbringing? Luck? According to Coyle it's none of the above. Three factors help propel people to achieve more than others: deliberate practice, ignition and master coaches.

The Talent Code: Greatness Isn't Born. It's Grown. Here's How. covers a lot of the same ground as Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else but takes a different approach that is broader by spanning the range from basic neurology to coaching techniques. Both books feature the vital role of "deliberate practice", focused effort to improve. Not just doing something repeatedly but also doing something in a targeted manner that drives improvement.

The Talent Code goes a step further to explain why. Repetition causes myelin to grow around neural paths in the brain. This layer of myelin shields the pathway to reduce signal loss and ultimately accelerates and strengthens the signal. Deliberate practice builds myelin while also forcing the practicer to the edge of their ability where mistakes are made. Fixing these mistakes results in strengthening their skill. Although the author doesn't mention it this process also fosters "flow", the state of being so absorbed in an activity that you lose sense of time and of self.

Deliberate practice requires hours and hours of commitment. What motivates people to invest thousands of hours? Ignition: the desire to become who you want to be. (This resembles the ancient Greek concept of daimonism: becoming your ideal self.) These people have a vision of who they want to become: their vision draws them forward.

Practice and fire by themselves aren't quite enough. We need someone to guide us, to push us to the point where we make mistakes then help us correct them. We need master coaches, or "talent whisperers" as Coyle calls them.

These coaches work their magic not with stirring pep talks but with sharply focused, corrective input. When their student does an act correctly they say, "Good, now do this" and pose a more challenging task. He holds college basketball coach John Wooden as an exemplar of this approach. Wooden prefers to present challenges that his players have to solve. If they don't figure out the solution Wooden helps. (I've used this approach in coaching youth and premier league soccer and believe it helps create players who can think for themselves in competition rather than depending on the coach to give them solutions during the game.)

In essence The Talent Code says:

1. To build myelin use deliberate practice (which encourages flow).

2. To maintain motivation follow your ideal self - ignition.

3. To maintain one's course rely on a master coach.

Speaking as someone in his late 50's The Talent Code also has an optimistic message for people like me. You can grow myelin, hence skill, at almost any age. It just takes longer as you get older.

Do Sports Build Character or Express It? Yes!

2009-05-25T15:09:00.001-04:00

I’m sure this isn’t an original thought but it is something I’ve concluded based on my ten years of experience coaching soccer. The common saying is that sports build character. I’m sure at young ages when kids first get involved this is true. They’re being taught the importance of teamwork, doing your best regardless of the circumstances, respect for teammates, coaches, your opponents, officials and yourself and the discipline needed to get good at anything.

Having coached kids from 10 to 18 years old I’ve concluded that participation in sports for older ages is an opportunity to express one’s character, to show what one is made of. I’m sure the coach can still exert some influence on older kids but I think these kids are fairly set in their basic principles and beliefs by the time they enter the later teenage years.

Talent is Overrated Review

2009-04-09T21:46:00.009-04:00

Most of believe some people “have it” and some people don’t. What the people “have” is talent. Gobs and gobs of talent that allows them to be world class level competitors. People like Tiger Woods or Alex Rodriquez. CEOs like GE’s Jack Welch. Many of us believe that these people come into this world equipped with talent that allows them to beat the competition and that we who don’t have it will never be able to reach these lofty heights of achievement.

Geoff Colvin disputes this in Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. He claims that the top performers in sports, business, the arts and other areas share something in common: the use of “deliberate practice.”

The gifts possessed by the best performers are not at all what we think they are.

Even the general abilities … are not what we think.

The factor that seems to explain the most about great performance is something the researchers call deliberate practice.
Most organizations are terrible at applying the principles of great performance.

What is deliberate practice? The elements are, as Colvin explains.

It is actively designed specifically to improve performance, often with a teacher’s help. Identify elements that need to be improved then work intently on them. It can be repeated a lot; feedback on results is continuously available; it’s highly demanding mentally; … and it isn’t much fun. … We insistently seek out what we’re not good at. Then we identify the painful, difficult activities that will make us better and do those things over and over.

Speaking personally, I heard about the concept of deliberate practice in my research on soccer coaching in which I stumbled upon an article on the subject. I applied the concept to tennis, my sport of choice. By working diligently on my weaknesses (primarily the serve) I have been able to transform my serve from a liability into a weapon.

Colvin also addresses another misconception. We’ve heard many times that we with repetition we’ll get to the point where we don’t have to think what we’re doing. While it is true we can automatize complicated movements to the point where we no longer have to consciously guiding these movements. In fact, we can thwart smooth performance by thinking too much. However Colvin shows that:

Great performers never allow themselves to reach the automatic, arrested development stage in their chose field. … Ultimately the performance is always conscious and controlled, not automatic.

In other words, top performers maintain a constant awareness of whether their actions are producing desired results. When these results don’t occur, they modify what they are doing to improve their results and use this input to refine the design of their deliberate practice.

In addition to being constantly aware of what they are doing, top performers perceive more. How?

They understand the significance of indicators that average performers don’t even notice.
They look further ahead.
They know more from seeing less.
They make finer discriminations than average performers.

And top performers “had more knowledge about their field.” They “have better organized and consolidated their knowledge, enabling them to approach problems in fundamentally different and more useful ways.”

In addition to explaining how top performers use deliberate practice to distance themselves from their competitors Colvin shows how we can use the same principles in our own lives.

They approach the job with more specific goals and strategies, since their previous experience was essentially a test of specific goals and strategies; and they’re more likely to believe in their own efficacy because their detailed analysis of their own performance is more effective than the vague, unfocused analysis of average performers. Thus their well-founded belief in their own effectiveness helps give them the crucial motivation to press on, powering a self-reinforcing cycle.

Finally, Colvin explores the role of two kinds of drive: intrinsic and extrinsic. According to his research creative people focus on the task (How can I solve this problem?) and not on themselves (What will solving this problem do for me?). This is an example of intrinsic motivation, being driven from within. Extrinsic motivation on the other hand depends on outside factors like rewards or penalties.

Does Colvin argue that extrinsic motivation plays no role? No.

Extrinsic motivators that reinforce intrinsic motivation could work quite effectively. Like what? Recognition that confirms competence turned out to be effective. … ‘constructive, nonthreatening, and work-focused rather than person-focused,’ in Amabile’s words. That is, feedback that helped a person do what he or she felt compelled to do was effective.

Feedback from coaches and teachers focused on the task and doing it better.

Lastly Colvin reveals that the majority of childhood prodigies don’t grow up to be top performers and that top performers are rarely child prodigies. This gives us hope for improving how we perform. “[B]y understanding how a few become great, anyone can become better.”

The Meaning of Success

2009-03-14T09:07:00.004-04:00

I reviewed The Happiness Trap last summer. Subsequently I signed up for the newsletter issued by Russ Harris. The latest one contains some interesting comments on the "success trap."

The “Success” Trap
What does the word “success” mean to you? When you hear “She is very successful” or “He’s made a success of himself” what does that conjure up for you? Our society generally defines success in terms of achieving goals: fame, wealth, status, respect; a big house, a luxury car, a prestigious job, a huge salary. When people achieve these things, our society tends to label them as “successful”. But if we buy into this popular notion of success, we set ourselves up for a lot of unnecessary suffering.

How so? Well, this view of success inevitably pulls us into the goal-focused life - always striving to achieve the next goal: more money, larger house, better neighborhood, smarter clothes, slimmer body, bigger muscles, whiter teeth etc. And the illusion is, “When I achieve this, then I will finally be successful”. And of course, the corollary of that is “When I am successful, I will be happy.” The problem is: a) we may never achieve those goals, or they may be a long way off – which leads to chronic frustration and disappointment; and b) even if we do achieve them, they will not give us lasting happiness; usually they give us a brief moment of pleasure, satisfaction, joy – and then, we are focusing on the next goal.

Furthermore, if you buy into this notion of success, it will put you under tremendous pressure - because you have to keep on achieving and achieving to maintain it. As long as you keep achieving those goals, then you are successful - ‘a winner’, ‘a high-achiever’. But if you stop achieving, then you are no longer successful; you are a ‘has-been’, or ‘a failure’ or ‘a loser’. It is this popular notion of success that leads to the widespread issue of “fragile self-esteem”. Fragile self-esteem is very common in high-performing professionals. These high-achievers often develop a strong positive self-image based on their performance. So as long as they perform well, they have high self-esteem. But as soon as their performance drops, their self-esteem comes tumbling down: from ‘winner’ to ‘loser’, from ‘high-achiever’ to ‘failure’.

In The Happiness Trap, I suggested an alternative definition of success: success means living by your values. If we redefine success in this way, it makes life so much easier – because in any moment, we can act on our values – even though our goals may be a long way off. Suppose you want to change career and become a cardiac surgeon – well, you are looking at a minimum of ten years of your life before you can achieve this goal. That’s a long time. But suppose the core value underlying that goal is to help others. Well, you can act on that value over and over and over, all day, every day for the rest of your life – even if you never become a cardiac surgeon.

By the conventional notion of success, Martin Luther King was not successful: he did not achieve his goal of equal rights for people of all skin colors. And yet – we remember, admire and respect him. Why? Because he stood for something: he lived by his values! And when living by our values becomes the definition of success, it means we can be instantly successful right now. All we need to do is act on our values. From this perspective, the mother who gives up her career to act on her values around nurturing and supporting her children is far more successful than the CEO who earns millions but completely neglects his values around being there for his kids.

Albert Einstein put it this way: ‘Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.’

And Helen Keller put it like this: ‘I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.’

So next time your mind is beating you up for not being successful enough, try saying ‘Thanks mind!’ And then ask yourself ‘What’s a tiny little thing I can do right now, that’s consistent with my values?’ Then go ahead, and do it. And therein lies the secret of ‘instant success’.

The Pursuit of Unhappiness

2009-01-11T17:03:00.003-05:00

A lot of my reading centers on well-being and living a good life. In this vein I just started reading The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being, by Daniel W. Haybron. He makes a distinction between the approach the ancient Greeks took toward happiness and well-being versus that of the Enlightenment that I have not encountered before. I feel it is worth highlighting this difference before finishing the book. I plan to write a review after reading it. Below are several key quotes from early in the book. (Note these quotes are not contiguous.)

The ancients apparently took it as a given that individuals are not, in general, authorities about their own welfare. Quite opposite: most ancient philosophers followed Socrates’ lead in distinguishing ‘the many’ and ‘the wise,’ with the former and much larger class being, basically dolts. Aristotle notoriously maintained that some of us are so ill-fitted for self-governance that we are better off enslaved, with masters to look after us.

The spirit of modernity is rather different. Inspired by Enlightenment optimism about the individual’s powers of reason and self-government, modern liberals tend to believe in one or another form of the sovereignty or authority of the individual in matters of personal welfare: by and large, people know what’s best for them, and tend to act rationally in the promotion of their interests.

But what if it turns out that people don’t have this kind of authority? What if they frequently and predictably make serious mistakes about what matters in life, act irrationally, or otherwise err in ways that undercut their prospects for well-being? What if, as a result, they tend to botch their lives at an alarmingly high rate, in many cases being unwitting pursuers of unhappiness?
The central thesis of this book is that people probably do not enjoy a high degree of authority or competence in matters of personal welfare.

I’m sure the rest of The Pursuit of Unhappiness will flesh out the empirical case for Haybron’s thesis. I’ve read other books that report results of various studies which reveal the inability of the average person to recognize the effects of genetics, temperament, and subjectivity on decision-making. To me these findings don’t prove it is impossible to be objective, just that it’s work. Sometimes it’s hard work!

In any case, I’ll write more on this interesting book when I’ve finished it. Wanted to throw out these quotes as thought provokers.

Tennis and life

2008-12-05T19:22:00.003-05:00

After years of playing tennis I've realized that I get more out of it than just physical exercise and releasing pent up energy or aggression. There are three other things. First, while I don't particularly like dancing (especially the kind where you just stand separate from your partner and gyrate aimlessly) tennis comes close to what others probably get out of ballroom dancing: fluidity of movement combined with a purpose. I've always admired Sampras and Federer for their effortless, graceful yet powerful movement. I've tried to emulate that.

Second, when you get deep into a match I find it's also like a form of meditation because you are so focused on one task that everything else falls away. When this happens we reach the “flow” state described by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

Third, one of my main goals in life is to find balance. In tennis it's integrating the mental challenges with the various physical challenges. Trying to find the right blend of power, touch, spin, tactics and even deception (by setting up to make it look like I'm going one way then going another at the last instant). Then there are the various challenges. How to handle a power hitter? How to handle a much younger player? How to pace yourself in a 2+ hour match in 90+ degree heat? How to play with an injury? How to play when your game is "off"? And how to handle a loss? I think a lot of this spills over into other parts of life.

Happiness vs. Vitality

2008-11-05T21:56:00.002-05:00

I reviewed The Happiness Trap by Russ Harris a while ago. Just recently I received the latest newsletter from the author which had an interesting observation.

[I]f we believe that happiness is the same as feeling good, we are constantly going to be struggling. Expecting to feel good all the time is like expecting a crocodile to be your best friend. You’re soon going to be disappointed. In ACT, we generally stay away from using the term “happiness”, as so many people think it means “feeling good”. Instead, we talk about “vitality”: a sense of being fully alive and embracing each moment of life, regardless of how you are feeling in that moment. If we were to define happiness in ACT terms, we would define it as living a rich, full and meaningful life in which you feel the full range of human emotions; or as the sense of vitality and wellbeing that comes from living by your values (something the ancient Greeks called “eudemonia”).

I like this idea of vitality and eudemonia (also referred to as “flourishing”). In fact, I wrote a paper on the Greek concept of eudemonia. Edith Hamilton best summarized it in her The Greek Way as: “The exercise of vital powers along lines of excellence in a life affording them scope.”

Tips for maintaining objectivity

2008-10-11T10:58:00.001-04:00

Here is one page summary of cognitive distortions thanks to Michael Prescott. Has some good advice!

The Happiness Trap Review

2008-08-16T22:08:00.004-04:00

The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living by Russ Harris is one of the best self-help books I’ve ever read. Yes, that’s a bold claim, especially with how many books of this kind fill the shelves of bookstores. I’ve read a lot of these books over the years. Almost all of them offer variations on one of several themes. Think positively. Repeat affirmations to counter negative thoughts. Bolster your self-esteem. All of them, according to Harris, share the same trap. “To find happiness, we try to avoid or get rid of bad feelings, but the harder we try, the more bad feelings we create.” This trap comes from the shared definition of happiness as feeling good. The Happiness Trap adheres to a different definition of happiness: living a rich and meaningful life.

Living such a life doesn’t automatically mean we’re feeling good all the time. We will still have negative feelings and challenges to overcome. The goal of The Happiness Trap then is to give us strategies to deal with negative feelings without denying them. Harris offers six core principles.

1. Defusion. Painful or unpleasant thoughts are defused by various techniques such as labeling them. When one notices such a thought instead of suppressing or denying it we create some distance by saying “I’m having the thought that …” In doing so we put some distance between the thought and us. In other words, we strive for objectivity.

2. Expansion: consists of making room for unpleasant thoughts and feelings.

3. Connection: being fully aware of your here and now.

4. Distinguishing between your thinking self and observing self. The various techniques in The Happiness Trap get us out of our thinking self and into our observing self.

5. Values: what kind of person are you and want to be? What is significant and meaningful to you? What do you stand for?

6. Committed action. All of this business about being objective and mindfulness must be followed by a commitment to action if we truly want to change.

These principles form the core of Action and Commitment Therapy (ACT), developed by Steven Hays. While Hays and others have published a number of books on ACT they were written for therapists applying ACT to different conditions. The Happiness Trap translates ACT’s principles for laymen interested in applying these principles. As Harris points out ACT also stands for something else:

A – Accepting your thoughts and feelings and being present in the moment,

C – Connect with your values, and

T – Take effective action.

The Happiness Trap holds a lot more insights and techniques than I can do justice to here. Overall I like several aspects of The Happiness Trap and ACT.

They don’t try to suppress or ignore emotions. The recommended methods aim at honoring these emotions while trying to get beyond them.
They emphasize mindfulness and objectivity.
The end goal is to get us to act, not just to idly analyze our feelings.
Values play a key role because ultimately this is what motivates us to action: what is important to us.

As I said at the beginning The Happiness Trap has joined the small group of my favorite books. It offers a realistic guide with a number of helpful activates to get us to move beyond self-limiting thoughts and emotions so we can obtain, express and enjoy our values.

How to say No: Update

2008-07-19T10:30:00.003-04:00

Back on December 31, 2007 I posted a review of The Power of a Positive No and outlined their basic method of yes-no-yes. This means when faced with saying no to someone you first state your interest (the first "yes"), say your no (that you can't or won't do what is requested) then end with an alternate proposal (the second "yes"). I have been applying this since that review and can report that it does help in two ways. It helps me to resist doing things I don't want to while still maintaining a relationship if the request is coming from some with whom I have a continuing relationship.

Here is an example from work. A broker I deal with on my accounts asked me to remove something from one of our reports (while copying two of my account contacts). I said that my company policy wouldn't allow it even if I agreed with him but that I would investigate it further by discussing it with our technical expert. The key is that I offered to write an e-mail or letter that indicates that the recommendation in our report is our best advice but does not affect how we look at the account. The broker thanked me for the offer but said he was willing to wait to see what happened with our technical expert's review. I believe my explanation about being limited by company policy but willing to help if I could kept the broker on my side and left him willing to see how things play out. I think if I had left off the final "yes?" the situation could have escalated.

Made to Stick Review

2008-06-22T16:54:00.004-04:00

Have you ever needed to make a memorable point? If you answered no then you must live by yourself, work in a job with no interaction with people, don’t have kids and aren’t married. For the rest of us every day we’re faced with making a point, asking for someone to do something, convincing someone of your position and so on. Some people do it better than others. A lot better. Why? What makes some people so effective while the rest of us struggle?

Chip and Dan Heath have studied this question and concluded that all of us can craft messages that “stick” by applying several principles which are explained in Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.) Being true to their own advice even their book cover is catchy: it has what appears to be duct tape across the front.)

Their formula for success is SUCCES.

S: Simple. Find your core idea and make it compact.

U: Unexpected. Find something unexpected about your core idea and communicate it in a way that keeps your audience guessing. You do this by focusing on what questions you want your audience to ask.

C: Concrete. Make it easy to understand by translating jargon into laymen’s terms. Too many times we slip into using our profession’s jargon and think everyone else understands our lingo.

E: Emotional. Your audience is constantly asking, “What’s in it for me?” Keep this in mind or you’ll lose them!

S: Stories. When possible wrap your message in a story.

This last feature - how to tell stories - has become a cottage industry. But this approach recognizes that we become more involved and receptive when listening to a story as opposed to a dry lecture or a litany of facts. (See The Secret Language of Leadership by Stephen Denning.)

The Heaths provide many examples and stories to support their principles. In the interest of keeping this entry short I have only reported the key points (in a fashion typical for an engineer).

Coming from an engineering background where the currency of the field is facts, facts and even more facts, I’ve come to appreciate the effectiveness of appropriately packaging and presenting these facts to improve how they’re received. The Heath’s advice is sticking with me.

Review of The World is Flat 3.0

2008-06-21T22:29:00.005-04:00

Do you ever debate buying a book? You know what I mean. Something about the cover or title catches your eye. You pick up the book, skim it a bit then put it back onto the shelf. The next time you go back to the store you go through the routine again. And again. Finally you break down and buy the book. After reading it you wonder why you didn’t buy the book the first time. That’s the story of The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman. I must have picked up the book five times before buying it. I wish I had bought it sooner.

Not that this book is perfect. A 100 or more pages could easily be trimmed with tighter editing and removing repetitive passages and Friedman’s name-dropping stories. But his premise is interesting and particularly applicable to individualists. By “flat” Friedman “means equalizing, because the flattening forces are empowering more and more individuals today to reach farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before, and that is equalizing power.”

Friedman contends we are in the third version of globalization. In Globalization 1.0 countries were the key agents in the world. Globalization 2.0 shifts from countries to international companies; Globalization 3.0 shifts again with individuals becoming the focal point.

The World is Flat identifies ten flatteners behind this evolution. While I won’t discuss each one they fall into three categories: political, business practices and individual empowerment. The key political flattener was literal: the flattening of the Berlin Wall in 1989 which enhanced the free movement of best practices. Most of the other nine flatteners deal with corporate practices such as work flow software, outsourcing and off shoring which drew formerly isolated countries such as India, China, Mexico and others into the world market. As the corporate practices lowered barriers between countries other developments occurred to enhance the ability of individuals to obtain information and, more important, to express their ideas that normally would have no outlet. Of course, we’re talking about the Internet, search engines and blogging. Traditional media outlets like TV and radio (except call-in talk shows) are just that: outlets in which the participants passively receive media output with limited ability to have their voices heard.

Blogging, personal web pages, etc. allow individuals to express themselves and to form collaborative virtual communities. In addition, as Friedman notes, small and medium size companies hire the most people, not the mega-corporations. Flattening allows these small businesses to compete better with the big boys. All of these developments provide tools to empower individuals like no other time in history.

These developments also could bode well for preventing wars. While some conservative thinkers fear (appropriately) the growth of Islamic terrorism and the rebirth of totalitarianism, Friedman shares something both interesting and hopeful: the Dell theory of conflict prevention. “No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain.” In other words, economic interdependence can trump political agendas. One can only hope that this theory is true! Of course there are no guarantees. Political leaders can force their agenda onto an unwilling citizenry. However the ease of being able to do this is getting more difficult as the world flattens.

Returning back to the individual, Friedman offers some advice to succeed. “The most important competition is now with oneself – making sure that you are always striving to get the most out of your imagination and then acting on it.”

Life Lessons from Refereeing

2008-05-03T19:48:00.002-04:00

This post might not seem to relate to the theme of this blog which is flourishing and how to live a good life. Bear with me. I hope the connection will be clear by the end of this post.

On a Massachusetts soccer forum one poster asked why many games in Massachusetts Premier League (MAPLE) don’t have three officials. This spurred a number of posts by referees who shared their horror stories dealing with abusive parents and coaches. It is well known that there is a high turn over in referees. From talking to various people the biggest drop-off seems to be among the teenagers because of having to deal with adults who challenge them. For many teens this is intimating and even scary.

I got my Grade 8 referee license last spring and have done recreational games (Division 2 and 3) in my town, Massachusetts Soccer conference (MASC) games and even a MAPLE game recently. A week ago I worked the lines for a boys U14 MASC game in which one team was constantly pushing offside. Almost every time I flagged the team for it I could see a parent vigorously and vocally disagreeing with my calls. The center ref (who is much more experienced than me) agreed with me when we discussed my calls after the game. I can see why there is shortage of referees based on my experience.

So why are adults so vocal? Why do they feel they have the right to heap abuse on officials? Her are some ideas.

People (not just parents but coaches too) think it’s easy to referee. One coach said as much months ago in another thread on refereeing on the Touchline forum. In my opinion if you feel that way then you’re not doing it right and/or don’t understand the challenges of doing the job properly! I’m sure someone who has never actually stepped onto the pitch to referee (or play) look at the referee’s job as simply running around. They don’t appreciate that even under ideal conditions the referee has to make decisions quickly and on the fly. I’ve found that running the lines is even more challenging than being the center referee because you’ve got to stay in line with the last defender while keeping an eye on the ball and when it is played forward. In addition you’ve calling out-of-bounds, who takes the throw-in and looking for fouls.
Many parents don’t understand the laws of the game, particularly offside.
The focus on winning and losing regardless of the age or league. This is especially true in MAPLE where one goal can spell doom for a team’s future within MAPLE. So a perceived “missed” call by the parents, players or coach can escalate when so much is at stake. Yet we have also seen some outrageous behavior in MASC, even at the U10 level (!) where last year a parent was banned for the season because of extreme, continued harassment of the official even after the game.

As a coach of both town and premier girls’ teams from U12 through U18 my focus has been more on playing well and doing your best than on winning and losing. Why? Because you can’t control the outcome but you can control your effort. My message to my players is that as long as you play hard, play smart, play as a team and play fairly that you can walk off the field with pride even if you lose. Unfortunately some parents seem to live vicariously through their kids and feel winning at all costs is more important than the level of effort and thought.

But I think there is something else going on here. I think a collection of beliefs at work.

That a “bad” call “steals” success from their child.
Winning and preserving their kid’s success (the ends) justifies harassing the referee (the means).
Treating others without respect and as objects is OK as long as your ends are served.

The combination of these beliefs falls into the trap of believing that of blaming others for lack of success. There is even a whiff of the idea that parents and their kids are entitled to the results they want even if it might really not be deserved. And that’s why I believe this behavior does not help one to flourish.

Positive Coaching Advice

2008-03-22T14:38:00.005-04:00

While the subject of this post is geared more for those who coach (or manage) I think it's lessons also apply to how we coach ourselves as well as our kids. Below is a post from the And-Again soccer coaching forum. I like what the coach says. It’s similar to Tony DiCicco’s Catch Them Being Good: Everything You Need to Know to Successfully Coach Girls. DiCicco recommends that coaches emphasize what players do right with the idea that you reward someone for doing something right but also motivate the other players to emulate the same behavior. The traditional approach taught at least by the USSF is to stop play, correct what you saw wrong, have the player rehearse then restart play. I always had reservations about this approach because I felt it puts the player who is being corrected in a negative spotlight. If done too much the players will start playing conservatively, afraid to make a mistake. I saw this vividly a couple years ago when a coach who “helped” me with my U18 girls team stopped play almost once a minute to correct something he saw wrong. It didn’t take too long for me to see the girls dread every time he yelled “Freeze!” out of fear that they were going to be the one he singled out.

I’m not saying we have to coddle players or never correct mistakes. I think there are times to correct a player but to do it one-on-one or wait until you see a pattern of similar mistakes by several players then use this opportunity to show the entire team what to do better. But overall I like the approach of focusing more on the positives than on negatives.

Here is the link to the discussion followed by the text of the post from the coach.

http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/andagain/vpost?id=2586055

I am currently reading a book called "The Mind Gym". I think this is a must read for any coach...especially those of older teams that rely more on the mental part of the game to compete. One thing I took from the book is to concentrate on what you can do and not what you can't. For instance, before our game last night...which was against the top team in the league...undefeated throughout the winter and this would be our last game against them....I asked my team how they feel during a game if they are not playing well and we are losing. They said things like;

Ø Afraid of making mistakes

Ø Afraid of being subbed out / don't want to go back in

Ø Get mad at themselves

Ø Say negative things to their teammates

Ø Get tense and feel like they can't breath / feel tired

Then I asked them how they feel if they are playing great and no matter what they do everything goes perfectly and it feels like they can do no wrong. They said things like;

Ø Not afraid to try anything

Ø Feel like they can play forever....do not feel tired

Ø Everything is positive to all their teammates and themselves

Ø Don't mind being subbed out but are ready to go back in right away

Ø Feels effortless to play at maximum level

Ø Every thought is focused and clear and flows easily

So then I asked them what all those things listed above are. And they finally got it.....feelings. These are all feelings that every athlete / person carries within themselves. Their feelings can be controlled / channeled in a positive manner no matter what happens on the pitch. I ask them that when they made a mistake to just "flush it" and to pick each other up.

I had to correct my terminology and actions as well. Many times I will tell my defenders "not to lunge". Instead I said "get on proper technique and delay until they give up the ball". This is called coaching the "do's" instead of coaching the "don'ts" because the do's set a positive tone and re-inforces what they should be doing while coaching the dont's re-inforces a negative tone and sets in their mind what they should not be doing so the player might be saying to himself don't lunge, don't lunge, don't lunge so much that it sets that bad behavior into his mind. It's like when I play golf and I say don't slice the ball to myself. I always end up slicing it. Instead say to yourself what you should do and then practice it. Another example was when we'd miss the goal on a shot. This time instead of making a correction I applauded the effort and told them what a great job they did to create the opportunity and good try in taking the strike at goal

Throughout the game I had to bite my tongue. Breaking old habits is tough.

At half time we had a 1-0 lead. The feelings were positive and we did not talk about tactics. The kids were all smiling and positive. Some were already celebrating which I warned them about. I told them we had a long way to go and no matter what happened to keep being positive to each other. We had one bad lapse where our center mid did not mark up their center mid and he buried a beautiful 22 yard shot into the upper corner on a rope. About 4 minutes later a few kids were scrapping for the ball just inside our goal box and a quick toe poke found the back of our net and all of a sudden we were down 2-1 with 15 minutes left. I said nothing after either goal. The boys on our team were all shouting "2 minutes" to each other. It's a signal we use to ourselves to dig in and play harder for the next 2 minutes after a goal to get momentum back on our side. I was happy to hear them all say this. With 8 minutes left we tied the game after some beautiful footwork and intensity from our left midfielder to create some space for himself and his cross was perfectly to the head of our attacking mid who buried it. All I did was clap. The kids emotions were overflowing with positive energy. With 1 minute left we transitioned quickly out of our half and found our left striker 1v1 about 25 yards out from goal. He made a nice turn to the inside but the defender was on him and he cut it back outside and when the defender stepped he cut it back inside and had a step on the defender. From about 18 yards out he unleashed a shot toward the far post that hit the bottom of the crossbar and slid in to the goal. Clock showed 50 seconds left and the kids were all hugging and pumped. And again they said 2 minutes to each other. We won 3-2. Very big win for us psychologically and a very important lesson I learned. I coached in the "do's" and it made a huge difference. After the game one of my players who is ultra competitive and can get down on himself and his teammates at times said " that felt really good". And I have to agree that it did. Things don't always go like this...I fully realize that....but I feel it took my team to a new plateau and definitely taught me something about myself.

And by the way our keeper made some fantastic saves throughout the game and the kids mobbed him after the game.

So, how do you conduct yourself on the sideline? Are your words negative? Is your body language negative or uptight?

This is not going to be easy for my ultracompetitive personality but I am going to conscientously make an effort to hold myself to this standard. I have already had a few of my players email me this morning that they are still excited about the game last night. I think I may have set off something within them that will help them reach a new plateau in their development.

Competition and challenges as meditation and relaxation

2008-02-24T21:39:00.003-05:00

I just recently returned from skiing and re-learned a lesson from more than twenty years ago when I first read The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Gallwey. His premise is that we perform complex physical skills better when we relinquish control of “Self 1,” our conscious self to “Self 2,” our subconscious self. Actions like playing tennis or skiing are too complicated for our conscious mind to control. Gallwey revolutionized tennis instruction (then golf and skiing) by providing techniques to quiet and distract the Self 1 while the Self 2 is going its work. The problem is that Self 1 always wants to be in control and therefore is constantly trying to intervene. It’s a constantly challenge to keep Self 1 occupied.

However, there are another two aspects that I’ve learned from experience.

When skiing it’s important to stay relaxed and focused on the challenges ahead of the trail ahead without worrying whether being able to handle them. The same thing happens when I’m playing tennis and focus on my performance, not whether I win or lose. This doesn’t mean I win all of my matches nor am I happy when I lose but my chances of winning improve. Staying relaxed lets me perform to my potential.
Letting Self 2 operate creates a condition like mediation. Being fully involved in the task at hand without concern over the outcome creates an experience described as “flow” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. What I have found is that the effects of this flow state linger for a while afterwards. It ultimately has a calming and reenergizing effect.

Running up the score or running down the competition? To What End?

2008-02-15T22:41:00.007-05:00

This week the girls U12 club team that I co-coach easily won an indoor game against a local town team. When we jumped ahead by 4 goals we told the girls that they had to string at least 3 passes together before shooting on goal, that they had to use their moves and that shots had to be with their left foot (if their right foot is the dominant one). I have been involved in games where we were on the receiving end of mismatches. It's no fun for the losing team and I believe it doesn't teach the players on the winning team anything. Mercilessly running up the score also is poor sportsmanship, shows a lack of respect for the opponent and can let the girls slip into complacency so that they're caught off guard when they play a stronger team down the road. (I especially love the teams that celebrate every goal in a drub fest as if they just won the World Cup while their parents are ringing cowbells. Geesh! Get a life!)

Since the opposing team was not creating enough pressure on us (in other words, they were “ball watching”) we imposed conditions on the girls to make the game more challenging for them without disrespecting the other team. We explained to the parents in a team e-mail that we felt it was a good time for the girls to work on what we have been teaching them in practice: when you run into pressure you relieve this pressure by moving the ball elsewhere by a combination of back and square passes then moving into areas with less pressure before the defense can adjust. The natural tendency of players is to plow straight down the field until they run into the defense or run out of space then lose the ball (which is the approach you'll see in some other programs). Taking this “kick and run” approach creates ugly soccer with frequent turnovers and lost scoring chances. We would prefer the girls to possess the ball until they can penetrate the defense with through passes, wall passes or crosses. Playing this way also involves our keeper in the play as well. But, most important, this way of playing the game is more attractive to watch and is effective at all levels of competition.

But I digress. What does this have to do with flourishing? I’ve heard coaches for the team that relish running up the score claim that they let their players do so because they don’t know what else to do, that it’s too hard to turn off the competitiveness, and that their players shouldn’t have to pull in their reins. While this might be true for professional sports where coaches and players are paid to win, I don’t accept this at the youth level. (Even in the premier league in Massachusetts the standings limit the goal differential of a win so that winning by more than 5 goals doesn’t help in the final standings.) I believe this rationale is an excuse that feeds the coach’s and player’s egos. In other words, it’s a rationalization for poor sportsmanship and for treating the opponents as objects, as something less than human. I feel the purpose of competition is to test and expand your limits. If the opposition can’t provide enough resistance to challenge you, I believe it’s better for everyone to impose conditions on yourself to make the game harder and therefore more rewarding.

There also is the issue of empathy for what your opponent experiences. Easily and gleefully crushing a team can demoralize the opponents. What is to be gained doing so? A false inflation of one’s self-worth at the expense of someone else? A person who has a strong self-image doesn’t rely on making others feel bad in order to improve how they feel about themselves. Flourishing doesn't have to come at the expense of others.

How to say No?

2007-12-31T14:29:00.000-05:00

How do we say No? Why is it so hard to say for many of us? Is there a way of saying no that respects our interests while respecting those of others? Many of us feel uncomfortable telling people no so we take several ways of doing it. Probably the most common way is to avoid saying no by giving in, thus making us feel bad about doing so and begrudging the person who put us into that spot. As one who tests as an Amiable in Social Styles I know it’s hard for me.

On the other hand we all know people who have no trouble saying no and seem to relish in it with the sensitivity of brass knuckles. (Fortunately, this group seems to be a minority.)

Are these the only ways of handling saying no? No! (There, I said it!) William Ury, who has written a number of books on getting to yes [Getting Past No and Getting to Yes] and directs the Global Negotiation Project at Harvard University, tackles the flip side in The Power Of A Positive No.

His book lays out a three-step process consisting of 9 sub-steps. In essence his three steps are yes-no-yes. By that I mean:

Prepare by expressing your interests,
Deliver your no
Follow through by offering a yes that stays true to your interests while acknowledging theirs.

Throughout the book Ury also offers tips on how to word your no. “I won’t be serving on the committee. Thank you for thinking of me.” “I’m saying No now. Thank you.” As for offering an alternative yes, Ury suggests making a proposal that gives the other person a chance to say no to you. The idea behind this is “As Churchill realized, showing respect comes not from weakness and insecurity, but rather from strength and confidence. Respect for the other flows directly from respect for self. You give respect to others not so much because of who they are but because of who you are. Respect is an expression of your self and your values."

This last step – offering a counter-proposal - might seem to be controversial but to me it ultimately makes sense especially for on-going relationships. This proposal might be as simple as saying, “Thanks for the offer to work on this project but my plate is full. Maybe next time?”

There is much more to The Power Of A Positive No than I can cover here. Truth be told, I don’t have the 9 complete steps memorized. Maybe if I took a course on the subject all 9 steps would stick. But I can attest to the effectiveness of packaging my no’s in the yes (to my interests)/no (declining to agree)/yes? (offering an alternative) has worked for me. Plus, Ury’s approach is based on maintaining your objectivity, which appeals to me. By doing so you can clearly express your interests while respecting the other party. Being a proponent of passionate objectivity, Ury’s approach to saying no gets a big yes.

Competition and sportsmanship

2007-12-02T16:45:00.000-05:00

Recently I watched the movie Blue Crush (Widescreen Collector's Edition) with my twin teenage daughters. Blue Crush tells the story of a young lady surfer who wants to compete in an upcoming national event. However, she has to fight her own fears because of a previous surfing accident. Naturally, the plot follows the formula of almost all sports movies. Blue Crush is not a great movie but it’s not bad either. The conclusion of the movie takes a slight detour from the usual. The heroine, Ann Marie, makes it through the first round when her competitor wipes out on a massive wave. (The film takes place in Hawaii where the famous Banzai Pipeline is the scene of major competitions. I visited the Pipeline a long time ago and was impressed by the ferocity of the waves. The movie also uses professional women surfers for the final competition scene including Keala Kennelly.)

In her first heat Ann Marie takes a spill right after her competitor falls and has to leave the competition with a back injury. Ann Marie’s ankle leash gets caught on the reef so that she in unable to reach the surface until she can release the leash. Ann Marie gets to move to the second heat because her opponent can’t proceed but she doesn’t want to go out on the water again. Her romantic interest, an NFL quarterback, stops by the medical tent to check on her. He starts to tell a story how he was blindsided and drilled. She says, “So you got back into the game and won it, right?” He says that his coach talks him into going back in, does not win the game, gets pounded some more but he vividly remembers a perfect touchdown pass. Ann Marie decides to go back in, against Keala Kennelly.

In Ann Marie’s first attempt she wipes out then gets pounded by a series of waves. When she returns for her final attempt Kennelly tells Ann Marie to follow her to a place where the waves break better, tells her which wave to catch then cheers on Ann Marie as she takes the ride of her life and gets a perfect score from the judges. Her score is not enough to overtake Kennelly but Ann Marie doesn’t care because she overcame her fears and rode the wave perfectly. Kennelly gives her a high five afterwards. One of the cameramen watching Ann Marie celebrating her performance with her family and friends asks a colleague, "Doesn’t she realize she lost?”

So why does this sequence stand out for me? I think it points to several key points about competition.

Competing against a strong rival can bring out your best. Speaking from experience, I know that playing tennis against an opponent who is equal or better than me gets more out of me than if I was just working off a backboard or against a weaker player.
Which leads to the fact that competition can be a form of collaboration if both participants share this spirit. They recognize that hard competition can bring out the best in each other. This is why Kennelly cheers on Ann Marie. In essence she is saying, “If you’re going to beat me, do it with your best stuff.” This is where Blue Crush avoids presenting the adversary as evil or nasty.
Winning isn’t everything, but trying to win is. (According to books I’ve read recently Vince Lombardi actually said this, not “Winning is the only thing.”) There is no shame in losing as long as you try your best.
If you have a strong self-esteem then losing to a worthy opponent does not threaten how you feel about yourself. Losing might not be fun and you might feel miserable for a while, especially if you did not perform up to your standards, but it should not lead to resorting to cheating to get the win.

Presenting to Win/In the Line of Fire

2007-11-02T19:52:00.000-04:00

Presenting to Win: The Art of Telling Your Story I know there are lots of books out there on how to make presentations. I’ve read many of them. Why single out this book? Because I found it provided useful, unique information. Presenting to Win constantly reminds us to keep the following thought in mind: what’s in it for the audience. Over the years of sitting in presentations I’ve seen all too often the “show up and throw up” approach. By that I mean the presenter tried to win the audience by throwing out every conceivable bit of information in the hope that something will strike a nerve. Presenting to Win by Gerry Weissman provides different advice. He presents four basic ideas.

What is your Point B? (What conclusion do you want your audience to reach?)
WIIFY What’s in it for you? (What benefits will your audience get, not you?) In other words every feature about your product or service that you want to present needs to be translated into benefits for the audience.
What are your key ideas? (He calls them the Roman Columns.)
What flow structure will you use?

In addition to his advice on flow and structure Weissman also suggests how to design slides using how our eyes sweep a slide. For instance, he recommends bar charts increase in size from left to right. A chart that decreases from left to right creates the mental image of decline which we would not want to use (unless, of course, your goal is to paint a negative picture).

Weissman also recommends using phrases that do not talk down to your audience. Use “As you recall” instead of “Like I said.” Or, “I think you’ll see that” is better than “We believe.”

The common theme is that everything, from the structure to design to delivery has to be geared to the audience. The advice might appear obvious but we often tend to get wrapped up into what we want to say that we lose sight of how the message is being received.

In the Line of Fire: How to Handle Tough Questions...When It Counts

In the Line of Fire takes on Q&A’s, especially confrontational ones. While I found this book useful and different too, I do have a negative comment to get out of the way. This is one of those cases where it manages to squeeze a good article into a book. You know what I’m talking about. The content is enough to warrant a 10-page article. To fit it into a book the author has to pad it with lots of stories and filler. I’ve read books in this category where I felt it was not worth the money I spent. However, in the case of In The Line of Fire, the value of the core concept was worth the price and the padding. Weisman lays out a structure for answering questions. Not just questions at the end of a Q&A but handling tough questions in general.

Like Presenting to Win, Weissman advises us on how to phrase questions to show the benefit to the audience. He also recommends rephrasing questions using words like “what” (such as “What will we do to …”) or “how” (such as “How are we going to …”) which require more than “yes” or “no” answers and also do not admit to uncertainty or doubt about your being able to deliver. We say “How do we” instead of “How can we.” Rephrasing also strips out emotional words. The question “Why are your prices too high?” becomes “What is our pricing rationale?”

The key idea is how to slow down, think and structure your response first. Our normal reaction is to plunge into answering the question. Weissman says that we should buffer the answer from the question by rephrasing or restating it. This accomplishes three things. First, it buys you time to formulate your answer. Second, it lets you take the initiative by framing the question. Perhaps sanding the edges off of an antagonist question. Third, you can check whether you properly understood the question when rephrasing it by watching the questioner’s body language.

After the third step, which is to answer the question, you give your answer “topspin.” This lets you show your audience “what’s in it for you” and for you to get back on track towards your Point B, the message you want your audience to retain and hopefully accept.

I have been working on applying the key ideas from both books and feel they do work. I highly recommend both books.