Up Market |
- 14 Up-and-Coming Startups About to Make a Splash
- Top 5 Ways to Outsmart Yourself in Business
- Presence Point Book Review: ‘Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma’ by Nick Morgan
| 14 Up-and-Coming Startups About to Make a Splash Posted: 15 Aug 2012 08:00 AM PDT Name one truly inspiring, lesser-known startup you’re keeping your eye on now, and why.
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| Top 5 Ways to Outsmart Yourself in Business Posted: 15 Aug 2012 07:00 AM PDT
You're smart. In fact, you're smarter than average. Friends (and sometimes strangers) turn to you for advice. Everybody says you're as good or better than others in your field who are have more clients, charge more for their work, and get more attention. What’s up with that? Being too smart isn’t about IQOutsmarting yourself in business isn’t a function of IQ. It’s more often a function of knowledge fused with insecurity. Without further ado, here are the top five ways to outsmart yourself in business. And, just so you know, I've done every one of them. That's why I know they don't work. It’s also proof that you can recover. #5 Terminal Capability, aka "I Can Do That!"You get sucked into the black hole of terminal capability when you do things because you can at the expense of work that only you can do. It’s what my friend Michael Bungay Stanier calls sacrificing Great Work to Good Work. Remedy: Decide what your genius is and figure out how to delegate everything else. If you are a brilliant coach, don’t write copy for your clients. If you are a plumber, don't build decks. #4 Casual Commitments, aka “I Know What I Need to Do”A casual commitment is an incomplete promise. You confuse knowing what you need to do with deciding to do it and following through. You’re fuzzy about means and the timing. You don’t set clear standards for success or build in external structures of accountability. Remedy: Chunk things down and be specific about when you’re going to do each piece. Get someone else to hold you accountable for what I call high value actions, discrete actions that move your business forward. #3 Faux Learning,aka "I Knew That!"I've attended some pretty expensive and time-intensive trainings over the years, and invariably there is at least one person (sometimes it's me) who is intent on proving how smart she is. It’s expensive. It’s wasteful. And it does nothing to grow a healthy business. Remedy: Set learning goals so you’ll pay more attention to what you don’t know than to what you do. #2 Information AddictionWhen you’re really smart, it’s easy to learn. When your confidence drops, it is all too easy to escape into another course, program, or book. I call this information addiction. And as with any addiction, the more you feed it, the bigger it grows. Every time you learn something new, the bar for what you could know just gets higher. Remedy: Take a vow of abstinence from information. Start with one week. When you’re tempted to buy a book, sign up for a program, or go to a workshop, stop. Challenge yourself instead to put one thing you already know into action in your business. #1 Projected PerfectionismThe number one way that you can be outsmart yourself in business is being preoccupied with other people’s mistakes. I call this projected perfectionism. There are two ways that projecting perfectionism onto others keeps you stuck. First, collecting evidence of how others fall short gives you a temporary shot of superiority. You can get addicted to this lift, preferring to spend notice what others are doing wrong rather than risk making your own mistakes. Which leads to the second way and most insidious way that projected perfectionism keeps you stuck: It feeds into the fear that, if your work is more visible, you will be the object of constant criticism. It proves that it’s safer to be a critic than a creator. Remedy: Notice your reflexive judgments. Ask yourself what you would do better or differently. Then do it. What Happens to the Smart People?Being too smart can keep you from growing a business in spite of your talent. Here’s an epigram from The Charming Prince, dating to his years in architecture school: "The B students work for the C students, and the A students teach." Let’s prove them wrong. |
| Presence Point Book Review: ‘Trust Me: Four Steps to Authenticity and Charisma’ by Nick Morgan Posted: 14 Aug 2012 11:00 AM PDT
I loved Nick's first book, Give Your Speech, Change the World, so I eagerly picked up this book to glean relevant content to use with my clients in coaching Powerful Presence & Compelling Communication. While I expected tips and techniques for better public speaking & improved presentations, I got much, much more, including cutting-edge insight into the brain research behind communication behavior and, most importantly, specific strategies about how to use your brain to create high impact results. In high stakes communicationsTrust Me is written about Leadership Communications, but I recommend this book to executives, professionals, entrepreneurs and anyone who needs to bring their best self forward, particularly in a high stakes communication, such as: in the boardroom, in an interview, on a stage, in a difficult conversation and/or pitching a business, with an audience of 1 or 1,000. Nick inspires us to believe authenticity and charisma are possible for everyone by employing his 4 Step Process & lots of practice. The book is fresh, current, and modern. It contains many relevant client stories, examples illustrating the integration of brain research with practical application in daily interactions, exercises and practices to directly address the principles of the 4 steps. Every communicative act = 2 conversationsThe underlying principle of the book is that every communicative act is actually two conversations: the verbal (what you say) and the nonverbal (what your body says – covers emotions, relationships, threats to safety & other things). If the two are aligned, you can be perceived as a persuasive, authentic communicator. If they are in conflict, people believe the body language every time. This is the rub for many people who tend to focus on their content, often presenting a "data dump" that frankly would best serve the audience by sending them the information to read for themselves. Many often argue that they don't want to be "emotional" at work. What they miss here is that if you want to persuade & influence people, you have to show up with real connection to some emotion! The surprise is that brain research shows that our bodies actually "act" first on our nonverbal impulses, then a bit later, we form a conscious thought about what we are doing. "That intent, coming perhaps from . . . the limbic brain (deep below the level of conscious thought), governs a good deal of our supposedly rational lives." Nick describes the real paradox of trying to look authentic & charismatic by focusing on technique only: "(you) achieve control over your gestures by thinking not about them but about the intentions that drive them. If you think about the gestures themselves, they will happen too slowly & will look inauthentic." Bring on the emotion… or not?To control the second conversation, "you must focus on your emotional intent rather than your conscious awareness." For example, before entering a communicative act, you can imagine yourself in an interaction with someone who you truly do have an emotional connection with, such as a loved one or a good friend, and connect to the emotion of seeing and being with them. When you truly make a deep connection & feel the emotions as if they were happening now, your body responds in kind by becoming "open" and transforming posture, facial expression, voice, and body movements, becoming fully present in the room. And your audience will respond in kind. Demystifies & simplifies a very complex topicWhile rich with information, Trust Me demystifies & simplifies a very complex topic. It provides compelling examples of persuasive content and high impact rhetoric, the importance of listening and reading others, the power of body language to influence and gain commitment and how to create powerful internal dialogue. Becoming a powerful, authentic and charismatic communicator takes patience and perseverance. What I would love to have more of, to share with my clients, are case studies/examples of Nick's clients, who not only transformed their communication skills but who sustained their transformation and continued to achieve high impact results, with ease, over time. I eagerly anticipate his next book! Do your two conversations align? What is your body language saying about how you really feel? |
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