The Hidden Opportunity in Being Verbally Attacked

Years ago a candidate for California Superintendant of Schools repeatedly insinuated that his opponent was lying on her business tax returns and had an affair with a student intern. His charges were immediately disputed by her accountant, the student and several co-workers at her firm.

Not surprisingly, the attacks generated considerable interest in their first televised public debate that provided an unexpected akaido-style lesson for anyone who gets publically attacked.  The debate was moderated by three seasoned reporters who sat at a table in front of the studio audience, facing the candidates who stood on stage behind podiums about ten feet apart.

When the first reporter asked the candidates about their budget priorities, if elected, the critical candidate answered first, emphatically reiterating that he would be transparent and accountable, unlike his opponent, when spending public monies and then repeated his two charges against her, with the TV camera coming in for a close-up of him as he concluded, then swiftly swinging over for a tight reaction shot of his opponent.

Instead of looking upset, she had a mild smile on her face and began by praising him for placing a high priority on public accountability, but she didn’t stop there. She went on to laud him for one of the educational reforms he’d advocated, with which she agreed – all while walking over to stand within two feet of him, alternatively facing the reporters and her opponent.

He looked flummoxed. Because of their close proximity, the camera could easily cover both faces — and did. She went on to say she presumed, because he was so conscientious about transparency, that it was the press of his campaign schedule that had prevented him from reviewing the records she’d sent to him in response to “the issues” he’d raised about her. She then walked calmly back to her podium, with the camera following her, then swinging around to pan across the smiling audience.

When you throw mud you get dirty ~ Adlai Stephenson

As you might anticipate, this videoed interchange became the most viewed and discussed part of the debate.

Let’s delve into the anatomy of what happened and how you can turn false or simply heated attacks against you into opportunities to shine—especially in contrast to your attacker.

This phenomenon is akin to product positioning in advertising. In situations where your critic acts badly towards you, provide a side-by-side comparison. Start with your authentic praise of some aspect of their past actions, followed by your vividly specific characterization of your main differentiating benefit stands in sharp contrast to their behavior and attributes.

Warning: When under attack our first instinct is to flee or retaliate, leading to the possibility that oour behavior will also look unbecoming too.

Still many seasoned politicos say negative campaigning and ads, for example, are effective in attracting votes so they are forced to run them. Some are sleazy and real nasty.

Yet, some researchers disagree with this conventional wisdom, and their findings lend support to the notion of genuinely praising an action or admirable character trait of someone right after they have behaved badly towards you or someone else.

Here’s some recent reinforcement for you to praise the part in someone you genuinely admire — especially when you are tempted, in a heated situation, to “go negative.”

In discussing David Meyer’s book, Intuition: Its Powers and Perils, Gretchen Rubin writes in The Happiness Project, of this rule of human behavior, it “gave me another reason to stop being so critical.”  She adds, “In ‘spontaneous trait transference,’ people spontaneously and unintentionally associate what you say about the qualities of other people with the qualities of you yourself. So if I tell Jean that Pat is arrogant or stupid, unconsciously Jean will associate that quality with me. On the other hand, if I say that Pat is brilliant or hilarious, I’ll be linked to those qualities.”

“Ever wondered why people want to kill the messenger who brings bad news? Blame it on trait transference. Conversely, by specifically and vividly praising others’ actions that you admire, you’ll build your own reputation as well as theirs.

Here’s what also happens.

Whatever behavior you most remark upon in someone else is the trait that person is most likely to exhibit when around you.

We tend to act out the behavior that people have shown they expect to see in us, for good and for bad.

Compliment your husband on his planning that weekend trip (never mind that it is only the second time he has done so in years) and he is more likely to plan more.  ??If he does something that peeves you and you remain silent, rather than commenting, then those irritating behaviors are most likely to dissipate, rather than increase.

Talking or acting against a behavior is akin to underlining a sentence on the page.

You give the thought more energy and memorability. “Underlining” the actions of another with your reactions motivates that person to react to you.    That deepens the rut in the memory road for both of you.  It reinforces a behavioral script you meant to erase.

Such action evokes the Law of Unintended Consequences.  Amy Sutherland wrote about a variation of this effect in her New York Times article, “What Shamu Taught Me About a Happy Marriage. “ For weeks her article remained the most popular one the newspaper ran, then resulted in a book deal for her.  In conducting research for her book,Kicked Bitten and Scratched, she sat watching exotic animals trainers work with wild birds, dolphins – and Shamu.

A light bulb went on her mind.  Why not try the same successful animal training techniques on her husband?

Wrote Sutherland, “I should reward behavior I like and ignore behavior I don’t. After all, you don’t get a sea lion to balance a ball on the end of its nose by nagging. The same goes for the American husband.”

She began what trainers call “approximations,” “rewarding the small steps toward learning a whole new behavior.” (Parents and teachers have been taught to use it with kids, others to overcome phobias — and one person even suggests it for shaping behavior in church.)

Even more startling, perhaps, two studies conducted at the University of Wisconsin seven years ago found that when women spoke generally and positively about a trait that their husbands had not exhibited, at least recently (“Thank you for being so thought as I go through this stressful time at work”) the husbands began exhibiting caring behavior, often using the words she used in praising him.

“Honey, want to talk about your day and let go of some of that stress?”

Here’s the funny thing.

Even though most of us human beings long to be understood and loved for who we are we instinctively put up barriers.  We praise and give others what we like in ourselves and would like to be given. ??That’s the Golden Rule, after all.  ??Do unto others as you would have done unto you.  Yet the devil’s in the details – because other people are not you.

Consider, instead a Golden Golden Rule: Do unto others as they would have done unto them. Praise the parts of others they most like in themselves and support them in the ways that most matter to them.

Result?

They will go out of their way to compliment and support you. Rarely will they also follow the Golden Golden Rule back with you however.

That’s not instinctual.

Yet their well-intended positive energy towards you is more likely to bring out the happier, higher-performing side in both of you over time.

Simple put, people like people who like them.

And, as you build trust with that person, you can bring up the Golden Golden Rule and describe the traits (temperament and talents) you most like and value in yourself.

Ask for that person’s support in exhibiting those traits. Describe the kind of verbal and behavioral support that you find most helpful and gratifying.

Now that step represents a golden, golden oppportunity for you both to support and enjoy each other more over time. ??I’m not promising that this will be a smooth path towards mutual understanding and appreciation.

Yet it seems to be easier and more authentic and rewarding than any other alternative I’ve found thus far.  This approach can reduce the misunderstandings that lead to resentment and reaction against others.

It enables you to bring out others’ best side so they can see and support yours. That’s no small achievement, even if it happens just some of the time.   Consider it one more step towards your Learned Optimism and to Stumbling onHappiness.

And, since opportunity is often inconvenient, why not try one of these approaches at your first opportunity — with the next person you encounter —  and tell us what happens? See links at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2011/12/25/the-hidden-opportunity-in-being-verbally-attacked/

Follow Kare on Twitter @KareAnderson

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Why You Need in Inciting Incident to Alter Your Life  

Writing of her secret life as a prostitute, a blogger with the pseudonym Belle de Jour had a backstory worthy of a moviescript. In fact it was turned into a Showtime TV series. She wanted to have a satisfying next chapter of her life story so she wrote about it. You see she’s “a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology.”

Few of us lead a startling double life yet we may want to play a new part in the next chapter.

To create fresh scenes for your life, view it as a movie story. That’s what Donald Miller did when he wrote A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life.  Screenwriters know that in a movie a Character is What He Does. An Inciting Incident must happen.

If you are restless with your life why not evoke such an incident to turn your next chapter into the kind of adventure story you want for your life? That’s what I’m embarking on, in a halting way. Four friends are on this path with me and it would be great to have you join us.

“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it,” wrote Hannah Arendt yet we do define ourselves by the spin we put on the stories we tell.

Here are some steps.

1. Recognize the Story of Your Life So Far

How we cobble together the incidents in our lives and create a narrative thread reflects that spin, revealing our hidden personalities and our tendencies suggests psychologist Dan McAdams, author of The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By. To put it starkly, McAdams believes there are two kinds of people.

There are those who view life-altering experiences as “contaminative episodes.” An emotionally positive event suddenly goes bad and that will be the way they replay future incidents.

Others, like Taylor Mali view events as “redemptive episodes” through which they can eventually redeem bad scenes, turning them into good outcomes over time and becoming better people. I feel like I do some of both. How about you?

2. Choose to Put a Positive Spin on Your Stories and Pull Others Closer

“Emotion serves as a central organizing process within the brain,” writes Mindsight author Daniel Siegel.

How we feel about our past affects how we think about describing it – creating an endless loop of repeating scenes and expectations.  Seeing the patterns in our past incidents, choosing to learn from them and rejoicing in that growth can be done most naturally by shifting the theme of the stories we tell others about ourselves.  Move from contaminative to redemptive.

In this shift you create a life-affirming triple win:

1. You begin living from your strengths more often.

2. Others around you are encouraged by this emotional contagion, thus you are helping friends of your friends’ friends to see their life story in a more resilient light.

3. Reflecting resiliency in your storytelling can pull others closer as they are attracted to positivity.

Positively “integrated personal narratives are an important marker of psychological health,” according to Siegel.

Telling your stories from a resilient mindset also helps anchor that attitude in you – and more.

3. Storytelling Creates Connective Tissue Between Us

1. As you tell you often pull out stories from listeners. Stories tend to build upon each other and draw others in. They spark deeper conversations, begin to establish a common ground and build trust through that sharing.

2. Stories, by their nature, are static, action-driven and in sharing them we can move each other to act, to change.

3. Stories help to cultivate empathy, as PJ Manney points out, encouraging others to understand the perceptions and motivations of others including the storyteller.

4. A good storyteller can reduce a complex situation to its essence while cloaking it in emotionally memorable details. In so doing, stories focus our attention.

For example, if you choose to turn the page of your life story to a fresh chapter, a new adventure, you are setting yourself out on a quest. In describing this quest as a story to others, you may pull them into launching their own quest.

Stories are vital to build shared understanding. They help us make sense out of ourselves, each other and the kind of story we want co-create together as we grow our relationship.  Stories are where we create meaning in our days to endure loss and failures to have a redemptive narrative, to savor our life –with others.

See stories as oxygen in your life.

4. Follow Yourself into the Brighter Next Chapter of Your Life Story

A fun way to recognize how to tell your own interesting story is to get interested in exactly what it is about. Take one or two of Russell Davies’ suggestions to recognize what most  interests you. I’ve modified some of them to appeal to my lazy side and perhaps yours.

1. Take at one photo everyday and post it on Flickr or other place you can see your growing collection.

2. Start a daily one-sentence journal.

3. Keep a casual scrapbook – pasting in things you collect and captioning them.

4. Read at least part of a magazine, book or newspaper that outside your usual realm of interest.

5.  Interview someone for 20 minutes and observe the direction of your questions.

6. Collect something

7. Each week sit in a café or other public place for 30 minutes or an hour and listen to other people’s conversations. Take notes.

8. Each week write 50 words about something that stuck in your mind – a movie, building, sculpture, song, etc.

9. Make something and put it where you can see it or give it to the right person. 

 See links to this post at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com and follow Kare on Twitter @kareanderson

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See synchronicity as signaling the next chapter of adventure you seek, with others

Coincidences are often signs of synchronicity, yet they aren’t as obvious as some you may

 see. Unless you are looking for patterns.   Then you can notice what you are choosing to notice.

Ironically I discovered Daniel Johnson’s article online about meaningful coincidences by accident because he described an incident in which a friend of mine met her husband at a party she had not intended to attend.

Even today that story warms my heart and brought to mind a holiday party this year that I thought I could not attend yet unexpectedly could. There I fell into conversation with two people who will become lifelong friends I feel.

What are the coincidences that startle you?

No one in Beatrice, Nebraska, will forget what happened just prior to church choir practice on March 1, 1950.  All fifteen members of the choir were due at practice at 7:30 p.m. The minister, his wife, and their daughter were delayed when his wife decided to re-iron the daughter’s dress.

One member took longer than he expected to finish his sales report; another couldn’t get her car started; two others lingered to hear the end of an especially involving radio program; a mother and daughter were delayed when the daughter came home late from babysitting; and so on. Ten separate and quite unconnected reasons for fifteen responsible people meant that all would be late that one night. Fortunately, none of them arrived on time at 7:30, because at 7:35 a furnace explosion destroyed the church building. Mathematician Warren Weaver recounted the story in his book, Lady Luck:  The Theory of Probability, calculating the staggering odds against chance for this uncanny event as about one in a million.

What are the stories that reverberate in your mind, then guide you?

Two people set up a woman friend on a blind date, five years apart. They were the only blind dates she ever went on. One was on the East Coast and the second on the West Coast – both with the same man.

A singer’s career changes direction from opera to musicals after he walks into the wrong audition and successfully wins a prime role.

Just when he is feeling particularly alone in the world, a man runs into a close college friend on a remote outpost on a South Pacific island.

In each of these real-life stories, coincidences changed lives. Some coincidences are almost too purposeful and too orderly to be a product of random chance – but then how do we explain them?

Synchronicity is when the coincidence has great meaning for the individuals or people who experience it. When you experience synchronistic events, you might see them as a signal to change your life, especially if you initially resist the message as outside the usual “story” of your life.

We Make Choices Through the Stories That Stick in Our Mind, the Stories We Keep Telling Others

When you meet friends or family at the end of a day, you are often asked first, “How was your day?” Kids ask, “Tell me a story.”  Each of our lives is a story. Synchronistic events call attention to the structure of the story we are living. What if you were a character in the story of your life, but not the only author?

When external events so precisely mirror our own inner state that the impact of a coincidence cannot be ignored or its significance denied, and our lack of control over the events is indisputable, we are faced with the question: If I am not the author of my story, who is? Synchronistic events confront us with the possibility that sometimes the stories we make up about ourselves, the stories we would like to live, are not necessarily the stories we are actually living or – to go a step further - are meant to live. An “odd coincidence” can wake you up and point you in a new, truer direction, rather than the life path you should be on.  Synchronistic experiences can be the turning points in the plot we can use to lead our lives more meaningfully and to experience our fundamental, unavoidable, and potentially much more conscious connection with all others.

Synchronicity Can be a Way to Feel Connected to Others

Synchronicity is emerging as a phenomenon from many directions of study, as diverse as quantum physics, medicine, and astronomy. As Arthur Koestler observes in his book The Roots of Coincidence, synchronicity reflects the presumption of a “fundamental unity of all things,” which transcends mechanical causality and relates coincidence to the “universal scheme of things.”

Synchronicity is when traditional notions of causality are not capable of explaining some of the more improbable forms of coincidence and, further, when no causal connection can be demonstrated between two events but at least one person feels a meaningful relationship exists between them.

According to historian Koestler the human psyche has the capacity to “act as a cosmic resonator.” Some people believe that individuals and the universe “imprint” each other, which leads them to a belief in the ultimate ”oneness” of the universe.

Everything is “interrelated and mutually attuned,” wrote Arthur Schopenhauer.

In exploring the parallels between modern science and the mystical concept of a universal scheme or oneness, Koestler compares the evolution of science during the past 150 years to a vast river system in which each tributary is “swallowed up” by the mainstream, until all are unified in a single river-delta. The science of electricity, he points out, merged during the 19th century with the science of magnetism. Electromagnetic waves were then discovered to be responsible for light, color, radiant heat and Hertzian waves, while chemistry was embraced by atomic physics.

The control of the body by nerves and glands was linked to electrochemical processes, and atoms were broken down into the “building blocks” of protons, electrons, and neutrons. Soon, however, even these fundamental parts were reduced by scientists to mere “parcels of compressed energy-packed and patterned according to certain mathematical formulae.”

What all this reveals, then, is that there might be what Koestler refers to as “the universal hanging-together of things, their embeddedness in a universal matrix.” Many ecologists subscribe to this sense of interrelation in the world – what the ancients called the “sympathy” of life.  Some scientists are moving to this worldview.

Nobel Prize winner Ilya Prigione studies the “spontaneous formation of coherent structures” — how chemical and other kinds of structures evolve patterns out of chaos.

Karl Pribram, a neuroscientist at Stanford University, proposed that the brain might be a type of “hologram,” a

pattern and frequency analyzer that creates “hard” reality by interpreting frequencies from a dimension beyond space and time. That means the physical world “out there,” is, in Pribram’s words, “isomorphic with” (the same as) the processes of the brain.

If the modern alliance evolving between quantum physicists, neuroscientists, and others is not just a short-fused phase in scientific understanding, a paradigm shift may be imminent. We might come to see a new image of the universe, that it functions not as some great machine but as a great thought – unifying matter, energy, and consciousness.

Thus, the synchronicity you see can be the confluence of forces that you, well-connected to others, are using to guide you on a fruitful path of wise choices. That could be a comforting belief for mindful “us” to carry into the year 2010.

We Aren’t Crazy to Fear Losing Control

Synchronous events can be unnerving because they show we do not have complete control over our life patterns, and we, like all animals, fear the apparent loss of control in our lives. The fear of losing control (as when we experience coincidences that cannot be explained) makes our emotional lives threatening to our rational minds. It also challenges the assumption that we are separate from each other.

If we are open to feelings, we can feel not only our own feelings but the feelings of others as well. We then “know” that we affect each other in ways of which we cannot be completely aware.

Synchronicity brings us in direct contact with the collective unconscious, where we are in danger of losing our own standpoint while realizing the common pool of connection.

The’re Great Comfort in Feeling Connected

Theologian Rudolf Otto described “numinosity” as that experience we have when we feel we are undeniably, irresistibly, and unforgettably in the presence of the Divine – our experience of something that transcends our human limitations. This heightened quality of feeling that accompanies synchronistic events is their most striking characteristic.

If synchronicity is, above all, a connecting principle, then the quality of feeling produced by a synchronistic event – the numinosity and psychic energy it evokes – is the medium by which such a connection is made. The symbolism of a specific incident of synchronicity shows you the place in the story of your life where you are connected with all other human beings.

What You Can Do With Synchronicity

• Have a clear vision of your path in life, and be equally open to seeing the coincidences that “tell” you to consider another direction.

• Notice how meaningful coincidences reveal your inevitable connection with everyone, even those you do not “know,” and thus you must …

• Be aware that every action you take has immediate and continuing effects on many people, even those you might never meet face-to face.

• When coincidences happen, especially those that have an emotional impact, consider what special meaning they have for you regarding your beliefs, especially about who you are and what you “should” or could be doing.

• Become more conscious of:

- What you most value

- The best gifts you have to offer the world

- What you can let go and stop trying to do or be

-How many things are outside your control, no matter how hard you try.

-How you are often supported by a common river flow of other people, if you can just recognize their commonality in the symbolism of the synchronistic events that happen in your life.

Prepare Yourself for Helpful Change

Synchronistic events are often “wake-up calls” for you to make a change in your life. How do you work with synchronicity? Be open to the meaning in what you did not want to happen. Set aside your agenda, and consider that your story should take a different turn. Consider the possible symbolism for you in the incident.

If you are in a work or personal relationship, consider the real reason you are together, what you are to learn. See how you can use the experience to tame your ego, to move to a larger perspective.

Do not rely on your own ability to control and manage events, people, and objects. The most creative and effective part of your work can emerge only when you lay aside your own agenda and permit randomness to have a place in the story of your livelihood.

If you resist the meaning of a synchronistic event, you are likely to experience similar ones again and again, until you face the meaning.

Most every movement forward in life has three parts:

1. Recognition that the current situation no longer fits or works. An event can make this clear. When the event is synchronistic, we see that there might be more to our story than we thought before. Events that might be frightening or bad are, in fact, openings to a new life.

2. We enter a state of confusion and transition. We imagine how things might be different.

3. Then something happens. We get some help, our feelings become clearer. An opportunity presents itself. We take some action, and we move to a different, more satisfying way of being.

Our lives are full of meaningful events we deliberately set out to cause for ourselves in pursuing work and relationships. These are intentional actions.

Synchronistic events, however, by their very accidental nature, urge upon us another truth about our lives – a truth that we are in the habit of ignoring – that the meaning of our lives, the plot of our life stories, is not written simply by what we know about ourselves but comes from a much deeper place, from our innately human capacity to experience wholeness through living life in more aware connection with others.

When an ”accidental” twist of fate reorganizes our lives and shows us something we did not expect, we have two choices:

1. Numb out, ignore it, and move on so we’ll bump into a variation of it again and again, until we take notice.

2. Notice what it means for us and become more truly alive and connected with each other. Which patterns of accidental meetings and conversations with others stay uppermost in your mind?  How can they guide you to open the next chapter of the adventure story you want for your life now? See links here: <a href="http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2011/09/02/see-synchronicity-as-signaling-the-next-chapter-of-adventure-you-seek-with-others/

Invite the Unexpected for a More Adventuresome Life… With Others

Invite the Unexpected for a More Adventuresome Life... With Others

Odd things can happen when hanging out with those who don’t act right, like you. I got unexpected insights when, with two

 friends, I walked through the Steins Collection of paintings by Matissse, Picasso and other avant-garde painters in bohemian Paris.

In most every gallery room one friend would sit on the bench in the middle of the gallery, then casually look down. I didn’t understand at first. He was deep in thought, I surmised at first. Yet actually he was closely observing the shoes people were wearing, and there was a wild variety in this art-loving crowd.

Following his eyes I saw footwear as diverse as laced up-to-mid-thigh, purple velvet boots to topless sandals. They must have been glued to the soles of the woman’s feet.

Otherwise I might not have noticed that one doesn’t see many shoes in these paintings. Faces appear more often.  Yet, when looking at a Picasso, my friend was immediately reminded of  shoes he’d seen just before we’d entered the museum.

Meanwhile my other friend would describe the emotions he saw in faces in the paintings, and on people around us, commenting on their possible personalities. As you probably anticipated by now, what my friends saw  — and did not see  –  depended on the lens through which they viewed the world. One friend is a shoe designer, visiting from Milan. The other is a trial lawyer who is accustomed to sizing up clients, judges, witnesses and potential jurors. Sharing that experience through their eyes was a considerably richer, more multi-faceted experience. In fact, when we continued our lively conversation over coffee in the adjacent café, two pediatricians at a nearby table, in town for conference, joined in the conversation.

Discover Lessons for Not Living a Narrow Life

Forget passive entertainment and learning. Would you like to live a more adventuresome life where you:

• Stumble across new ideas that dovetail with the life you want to lead yet didn’t realize it until you experienced “scenes” you want to repeat?

• Attract serendipitous opportunities?

• Have meaningful conversations with acquaintances that sometimes become friends?

• Create your own fun with others?

Here are some lessons I’m slow in learning yet that have made life more fascinating

1.  Overcome Attention Blindness

We tend to see life through the lens of our work and life experiences.  That means we miss a lot. “As long as we focus on the object we know, we will miss the new one we need to see,” says Cathy Davidson, author of Now You See it.

2.  See How Differences Can Spur Fresh Insights and Innovation

One fun way to overcome that blindness is to share new experiences with individuals quite different than you in work, life experience, temperament and values.  The color commentary you share as you see that art exhibit together, or prototype a new product or collectively plan an event or place can broaden the landscape you see in the moment and for the rest of your lives.

3.  Speak to the Glue of Greater  Adventure or Accomplishment

Even better, if you share a sweet a spot of mutual interest in the activity you and your colleagues may nudge each other into staying connected and even co-creating something new.  That sweet spot can be strong glue for your group. As The Difference author, Scott E. Page, and Group Genius author Keith Sawyer both discovered, a small, diverse group can collectively innovate better than a team of of individuals with more similarities than differences.   If  my two friends and I had realized that we  were all fascinated by design and human behavior we could have discussed that upfront, before entering the museum and perhaps had an even more meaningful time – explicitly speaking  to those share sweet spots of mutual interest.  We do now when we seek out new experiences to share.

4.  Retrieve an Atrophied Part of Your Character

When engaged in conversation with individuals who do not know you, as we did in the museum café, you can express ideas that close friends might dispute or even not hear because they do not expect them from you.  YAs Melinda Blau explained in Consequential Strangers, this gives you the opportunity  to deepen a facet of your character or explore a latent interest when in lively conversation with people who have no preconceived expectations of you.

5. Seek Out Those From Whom You May Learn the Most

The kind of individual from whom you can learn the most is also an ideal kind of dinner guest or committee member or teammate. That person is T-shaped, as Collaboration author Morten Hansen somewhat antiseptically describes this priceless trait for our increasingly complex yet connected world. Such individuals have both a deep mastery of a topic (the vertical line of a “T”) and an open, curious mind — they enjoy learning from others (the horizontal line of the “T”). I am presuming theyalso tend to have a flexible rather than a fixed mindset.

A gentle warning here. Even when we see ourselves  — and our colleagues in front of us — as open and curious people we don’t act right around each other.

6. Hone Your Capacity to Thrive Around People Who Don’t Act Right – Like You

Since our assets spring from different outlooks, it behooves us to keep reminding each other:

• We do not see the same situation the same way

• “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” ~ Niels Bohr

•  We get to be learners and teachers for each other, and that means changing roles more often than we do in most situations, an uncomfortable behavioral shift for many of us.

• Some individuals are givers more than takers, others are the reverse. Yet to enjoy the next chapter of your life story with more disparate characters in it – the most likely path to greater adventure, you must become — and be in the company of — people who want more or less equal give and take over time.  Absent that factor power is not perceived to be equally shared that that inevitably creates conflict as the classic Tit for Tat game studies proved.

• More than leaders, diverse people, gathered around a common interest, must become deep listeners, committed – not to being right or in control but to sticking to a common conversational thread.

That’s a different discipline.

It takes practice and patience. I am not good at it yet am eager to keep learning.

What ways have you learned to see the world in fresh ways, through your experiences with others? I’d love to know. See links at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2011/08/21/invite-the-unexpected-for-a-more-adventuresome-life-with-others/ and talk on Twitter at @kareanderson

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Online Communities and Traditional Clubs Can Learn From Each Other

Online Communities and Traditional Clubs Can Learn From Each Other

POSTED BY KARE ANDERSON IN FRIENDSHIP, LOCAL, MEETINGS, MEMBER, MENTOR, PEER2PEER, SHARING, VISUAL, BEHAVIOR,COMMUNITY ON JUNE 26, 2011

Even Michael Skoler who leads Public Radio International’s interactive activities was surprised by the huge turnout for Ira Glass’ live version of his popular radio show, This American Life.

Wrote Gigaom’s Mathew Ingram, “More than 30,000 watched the first digital show at hundreds of theaters across the U.S. and Canada in the spring of 2008. The next year, 47,000 turned out. They came to be with other fans, experiencing something they all loved together.”

Hint: Host a road tour or gatherings where your online community members can meet face-to-face and collectively hear from their stars, their most valued members.  Unlike associations and civic clubs, many online communities haven’t provided an opportunity for in-person conversations and celebrations.

Conversely many of the traditional clubs aren’t maximizing their opportunity for members to socialize and to learn from members in other chapters – both online and in-person. As sister chapters and organizations get networked via the opportunity to see meet online and in-person, diverse ties deepen. Serendipitous friendships, breakthroughs and collaboration are more likely to happen.

What if, for example, Rotary International invited its members to create short video stories about their inspiring, first-hand experience in civic projects in their community and in other parts of the world? Next, what if Rotary, asked members to vote for their favorite video stories?

Then Rotary could host its own multi-city, simultaneous “film festival.” Invite members and their family and friends to gather locally in public auditoriums, homes and theatres to see and talk about those favorites.

Right afterwards it might host an online, vote-this-hour, People’s Choice contest so that worldwide audience could choose their Top Ten.

With Rotary’s squeaky clean, altruistic image, I’m thinking that many major companies would leap at the chance to underwrite the costs and/or provide the technical support to make this community-building dream come true.

Consider how instructive, heart-warming and member and media attracting that could be for a member-based organization with chapters.

Of course other diverse organizations with avid members, stories to tell and a strong sense of community

 could emulate their version of this approach.

Off the top of my head, those organizations  include the Westminister Kennel Club’s dog show, college and corporate alumnae organizations, Student Youth Tour Association in partnership with high schools, and the Cyclists’ Touring Club in the UK.

One of the smartest moves a company could make would be to launch and host an online community that becomes the most popular place for its kinds of customers to join, exchange ideas, co-create and otherwise collaborate.

To strengthen ties, understanding and value between members and between the company and members, that firm would, of course, host in-person events in formats that most serve that kind of community’s interests.  Those formats can be as varied as talent contests, mutual mentoring sessions, speed consulting, Pecha Kucha, Ignite or collectively viewing and voting on their favorite, member-created videos on the topics that brought them together.

A company-hosted online community that includes in-person events could be competition for some associations, accustomed to controlling the programs for their members, inviting “vendors” to pay to play yet often not giving them much of a say on how to participate for the greater good of members and vendors.

Have you heard of inventive ways that members of online communities are meeting in-person?

Do you belong to a club, association or other organization?  How could it bring members closer by enabling them to enjoy meeting both online and in face-to-face gatherings?

See more ideas on Moving From Me to We http://www.movingfrommetowe.com and t

alk on Twitter? @Kareanderson

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Communicate to Connect

Get Them Involved and Telling Others

That saying “familiarity breeds contempt” may be true. We tend to take loved ones for granted, no matter how well-intended. Yet it is equally true that familiarity breeds acceptance.  Thus it is easier to stick a new idea in someone’s mind if you can attach it to something familiar – an existing memory. So....

Become more quotable by employing this Familiarity Effect

Here are two ways:

1. Piggyback your characterization on top of a familiar concept or saying.

Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn and an investor in other successful online networks gave this advice: “Social networks do best when they tap into one of the seven deadly sins. Facebook is ego. Zynga is sloth. LinkedIn is greed.”

2. What familiar and respected product embodies the valuable trait for which you want your product to be remembered?

Plum wants to be the Netflix of baby clothes. Instead of buying clothes for your child, rent them then return the clothes when they are outgrown, and get a new set.

Here's a third hint. Let others be the stars in your story.

People are more likely buy your idea or product if they are placed in a situation where they can be the experts, exploring the topic their way.  Better yet, enable them to gain bragging rights, proving themselves right – in front of others - in their choice to buy from you or to support you.

Imagine, for example, the astonishment of the staff  -- and the sommelier -- at Bone’s, an Atlantic steak house 

when they started handing dining guests iPads at the table, loaded with a copy of the wine list. 

Purchases of wine, shot up 11 percent. Mused Mr. Reno, the sommelier, “With the information on the device, they seem more apt to experiment by buying a different varietal or going outside their price range.

It stuns me, but they seem to trust the device more than they trust me, and these are people I’ve waited on for 10 years.”

Or, perhaps diners feel more comfortable and confident, looking at various wines themselves and discussing them at the table. The key here is that they get to be the expert. 

Hint: Let others take charge of your message, tweak it for their needs and thus sell themselves on it. 

Entertainment mogul, Peter Guber, is a passionate believer in the power of a purposeful narrative. That means sharing a story that is meaningful to others, leaving ways for them to jump in and become an important part of that story. 

In Tell to Win, he gives many examples of how people love to tell others about a story in which they have a great role. Surrender your story to their re-working of it, rather than correcting them, and they will re-tell it with passion and conviction.

Organizations as diverse as LEGO and the S.F. Giants, and individuals as diverse as Nicholas Kristof and Tony Hsiehhave attracted passionate supporters, in part, by letting others take over their story to re-tell it in their own way.

Surrendering your vivid story in which we can play a meaningful role can probably spread it farther, faster and in more directions than you can on your own.  What story are you sharing that will pull me in? I am eager to hear it - and your insights about now to nudge us to participate with you. Let's continue the conversation at @KareAnderson and  at http://sayitbetter.typepad.com/say_it_better/2011/06/get-them-involved-and-telling-others.html

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Communicate to Connect