Pull 'Em in With a Pertinent, Emotional Picture Story

“The most beautiful thing I've ever seen was the image on a screen that helped our doctor see my wife's cancer was treatable."

See the story leading up to this grabber of a punch line in GE’s ad for electronic medical records.

Notice how the husband's emotion-held-in-check voice reinforces the mood of the story.

Next time I try to get someone interested in my idea I'm going to recall the swift, sequence of events-as-photos that built up to this emotional and relevant main point and consider how I can cut away extraneous detail and evoke more than one emotion.

For more ideas on swift storytelling in images see these. They evoke several emotions from heart-warming to surprise and light humor. I’d be proud to have created them and hope to emulate their "no extra detail" approach to pulling others in and holding attention. (I have no financial interest in the company) See links to this post here: http://sayitbetter.typepad.com/say_it_better/2010/02/pull-em-in-with-a-pertinent-emotional-picture-story.html

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Feel you flubbed the last speech you gave?

You’ll feel much better after watching Phil Davison’semotional appeal for support.

His talk demonstrates that recommending the use of emotion is not sufficiently specific advice for a speaker. Also, having apparently apt credentials like a Masters in Communication, does not necessarily mean one has mastered the skill.

In the apparent absence of their use Davison demonstrates the vital need in preparing for a speech to:

1. Discern, ahead of time, what most matters to your audience.


1. Craft an outline for your talk with a main point, no more than three supportive points, segues between them – each supported by a few relevant and vivid facts or examples - and “bookending” the beginning and ending of your talk with the same point and a call for action.


1. Praise the audience and/or individuals in it for specific, positive actions or beliefs that reinforce the stands you are advocating.


1. Ensure that your metaphors and figures of speech are congruent and make sense.


1. Practice in front of one or more people who are familiar with your audience and who will give you intelligent, candid feedback

At least Davison probably made Jan Brewer feel better.




Here's two speaker friends who continue to provide valuable insights about how to connect with your audience, move them to act and make a positive difference in the world: Bert Decker and Nick Morgan.




One final thought. Even if you are not the president someone maybe recording your talk so don’t let something you pledge come back to bite you later. See links here http://sayitbetter.typepad.com/say_it_better/2010/09/feel-you-flubbed-the-last-speech-you-gave.html

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Five Ways to Bring Others Closer

Even though we know we are more likely to savor life and attract more opportunities to collaborate when we click with others, we often get in our own way – especially when we are distracted or worse.  Here are five concrete ways to connect with others.

1. Face the world as you want to be treated

We’ve all been startled by observing a passerby’s dour expression instantly transformed into a warm smile when someone they knew came into view. The fixed-face habit is increasingly common yet it limits one’s opportunities to make friends or just be treated well.

I envy those who naturally display an open face, yet, with practice, we all can. We don’t have to turn into grinning fools. Research shows, however, that even slightly elevated eyebrows cause the eyes to widen and – presto – one looks more open and less judgmental.

Strangers unconsciously project onto such people the qualities they most admire in others, believe those people care – and act more generously towards them.

Unknowingly, as a journalist I came to have an intense facial expression, especially interviewing people I found fascinating (that’s my excuse anyway) until I interviewed an expert on Paul Ekman’sresearch on reading faces. He gently suggested that it would only take a couple of months of practice to “transform” my face into one with the open expression he was exhibiting in our interview.

It took me much longer – yet his advice comes to mind every time I see a dour or hardened face. That person probably does not understand the missed opportunities for friendship and more – just from this one simple habit.

2. Tour your body for vital signs

When you are literally uptight–rigid in any part of your body - others instinctively resist or even react against you. This phenomenon is akin to bouncing a hard rubber ball on a concrete surface as compared to a soft carpet.

The ball bounces higher and faster against the hard surface than the soft one, of course, just as others react more against a body that is even inadvertently held tight against the world.

Whenever you are entering an unfamiliar or potentially volatile situation, loosen up physically. It will help you feel more at ease. Walk, stretch, and release tension from the places where you hold it in your body.

Probably –like many conscientious, hard-working people– you hold your shoulders higher and slightly more forward than is natural, with one of the tendons in your neck tightened up even more than the other. If someone can give you a quick three-minute shoulder and neck massage, you will relax – and look at ease.  Others will respond more warmly to you.

Here’s another quick way to feel and look comfortable. Take your “pointing” fingers and the ones adjacent to them and rub both sides of your face in small circles, beginning at the cheek bone, near the sides of your nose, continuing along that bone towards your ears, down to the jaw line and on toward the center of your chin.

3. We feel closer to happy people, especially when we are happy

Enjoy the bond-building boomerang effect that happens with contagious happiness (when you’re happy, you cause your friends to feel happier, and that makes their friends happier).  As the circles of friends around you feel happier their upbeat behavior will swing around back through those friends towards and around you, reinforcing your capacity to stay contented.

Plus those positive feelings that boomerang back to you in waves from others serve as an emotional cushion in your rocky times. I’m suggesting this as reinforcement for you to smile your way into a better way of feeling. When we feel down we close down and withdraw. This boomerang affect enables you and those you are around to open up to each other.

4. Worried? Don’t keep thinking about it. Act towards what makes you happier.

Women tend to worry more than men so it is especially important for us, when we start to feel anxious or depressed to mentally change the channel of thought to something – any small thing – that lightens our mood.

Consider this.  In any situation you only have three choices: 1. Change how you act, 2. Accept the situation, or 3. Leave.  The sooner you make a decision the less likely you deepen the rut in your memory of fixating on worrying rather than acting to change.

5. Meet new people to see fresh sides in yourself

Want to pull new people into your life?  Like to show an evolving new facet of yourself?  Get out of your orbit. Attend a lecture, sit at a lively café, join a civic, special interest or non-profit committee.   In short, put yourself in a place where you don’t know anyone well.

That’s when, “we are more free to experiment with ourselves, and less likely to have our new behaviors and roles reflected back to us by people who object, ‘But that’s not like you!,’”  says Melinda Blau, co-author of Consequential Strangers: The Power of People Who Don’t Seem to Matter. . . But Really Do. She adds, “Strangers help us stretch beyond the relatively rigid boxes that the people who have known us the longest – our family and close friends – often put us into.”

This may be the surest way to turn the page for the next chapter of your life to be the kind of adventure story you now want. Even within one hour you can learn specific ways to stand out in your work or life.

See links here http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2010/06/21/five-ways-to-bring-others-closer/

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Which side of the Opportunity Chasm Are You On?

In a world that increasingly favors thinkers (vs. laborers) huge changes are happening, including these four, observes Arnold King:

1. The nature of marriage has changed: “Men & women look for complementarity in consumption rather than in production.”

2.  “Achievement-oriented men looking for interesting mates rather than for good maids.”

3.  There’s “greater inequality across households” - and that affects children’s well-being and opportunities.

4.  The chasm is widening: Increasingly the world economy favors thinkers over laborers.

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How Groups Can Make Better Choices

If villagers living in the midst of poverty and war can be nudged to work better together with just three simple rules (honed via a parental competition study) and a reward (money, in this case) then maybe your group (team, board, committee, etc.) could too:

1. The village leaders (or your project leader) are elected by secret ballot.

2. The village (or your group) holds communal meetings – meaning open to all participants and no secret side confabs.

3. The results of all meetings are covered completely and accurately and that coverage is made available, quickly, to all participants. Here are two other posts you may find helpful:

How We Help Each Other Do the Right Thing…Sometimes

Disagree? How to Keep Talking Instead of Arguing

See links at http://www.movingfrommetowe.com/2010/01/19/how-groups-can-make-better-choices/

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Make Your Meeting or Product Come Alive in Images

Like to literally see a story unfold? Want to make your complex product or idea simple to understand? Yearn to make your next meeting more memorable – and enable more people to experience it? Here are three vivid approaches offered by the masters of their visual genres.

1. Animating Your Story to Make it Come Alive

To see an animated version of a TV show, launched out of a radio program, This American Life, (still with me?) see Chris Ware’s coverage of the segment “Every Marriage is a Courtroom” and another segment here. What if you videoed a happy client using your product or service, then hired a cartoonist to created a Ware-styleversion to reinforce your message?Also consider a manga-style comic book version such as Dan Pink did with Johnny Bunko, along with a video trailer, of course. Lesson? Multiply the fun and/or helpful ways they see your message.

2. Drawing the Speaker’s Message to Compound Its Impact

Watch a graphically illustrated version (BigViz Book) of the last TED conference’s 50 or so speakers, brought to you by group cartographer, David Sibbet and Kevin Richards.

3. Illustrate the Steps So We Recognize How and Why to Take Them

How about getting some pictorial help on “how to” do something new? View the “plain English”, explanatory videos at Sasha and Lee LeFever’s Commoncraft.

Follow-up Ideas: Consider hiring one of these talents or others to:

• Illustrate the messages presented by your speakers at your conference or meeting. Give the results to attendees as an ebooklet or vlog  – a free meeting momento. Then offer it online to anyone else for a modest fee (new profit center?) – or for free to attract members and media coverage. Find a sponsor to underwrite the costs.

• Create the visual story of a new product, service, program or innovation. Feature employees or customers in the creation and distributionof this story. Feature it on your blog and web site. Tell your key media about it.

• At a brainstorming or other meeting, keep everyone focused on the goal, not whip- sawed by the verbally dominant. Share a Sibbet-style visual group record of the meeting with team members and other stakeholders.

Like participating in a lively Pecha Kucha, these other visual methods can make collaborating and learning together more productive and fun.

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You’ve Got Five Loooong Minutes to Grab Their Attention

It takes a tenth of a second to form an impression. So imagine how difficult it is to hold their interest for five minutes.  That’s a short time for you and a looooooong time to them. For practice in being memorably brief, find or start an Ignite group.  They are popping up all over, including in my hometown of Portland where an early social media mentor of mine spoke – Adam DuVander. Baltimore, Phoenix, Philly and Seattle are hosting them too. As in Pecha Kucha gatherings you are limited to 20 slides, advancing automatically every 15 seconds.

But that’s in a meeting room where you can rely on Powerpoint.  The next stage in communicate-to-connect prowess is to start an Ignite group where slides and PowerPoint aren’t allowed. In fact, ban technology beyond a microphone, if needed.

Yes, images help, but use them to warm people up to your idea before you are with them – or to reinforce it afterwards.  Use precious face time to connect. Anyway, in most everyday situations where you want to ignite a fire under your idea, you won’t have technology on hand, except, perhaps your cell phone. Besides, the most authentic messages happen when we see you saying them  – and come to believe in both.

At your association’s annual conference imagine having two sessions each day where ten  (pre-conference sign-ups ) attendees present their message, one after the other, Ignite-style.

Add a Wisdom of the Crowds feature:  Video the sessions and post them on your association’s site or blog.  Then all members could sign in for the first month after the conference and view and vote for their top five favorites. That might provide meaty insights into what most matters to members.  Plus it’s a palpable way to motivate and honor members for their best and succinctly-presented advice.

Update: Yet if you must use PowerPoint then get Nancy Duarte’s groundbreaking book Slide:ology and turn the pages in awe at the beauty and practicality of her approach. Like presentation zen guru, Garr Reynolds I am so delighted by her approach – and her generosity in including free videos of some of the presentations in the book.

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Easy Way to Organize Gatherings for Those Who Share Your Interest

Your hobby or work expertise or belief may be unusual, yet it’s likely that people near youshare your interest. Or they may just want to have fun. How can you find those kindred spirits? By hosting an ever-better MeetUp.

Also consider start a MeetUp to create a profit center for yourself. Or to hone a skill or support a cause.

What’s a MeetUp? Let masterful Lee LeFever quickly show you.Imagine making money by making others happier. See a large one to get ideas.

• Perhaps, like Liz Ryan, you’ve built a successful online business out of serving clusters of local constituencies. UsingMeetUp you can offer your people a new service. Face-to-face gatherings. Through your MeetUp, individuals can chat with people they’ve met online.

• They can meet regularly in some format that they collectively choose, with your leadership. Suggest formats such amastermind or other kind of mutual support group, cross-consulting or speaker series.

• Forge an alliance of your local MeetUp chapters.  Get ideas from how other alliances work. Recruit and reward local organizers who host “our” gatherings.

• Let each “chapter” decide whether they want their MeetUps to be free or for-fee or a mix of both. Should your local leaders be paid or share in the revenue raised through a speaker series or set of seminars?

• Get input from your host leaders by arranging regular conference calls with them via a free service such as Skype or FreeConferenceCall. In true Me2We fashion you can facilitate their sharing of ideas for MeetUp formats and topics. Explore how these phone seminars and in-person meetings can complement the online offering that you, like Liz Ryan, offer your clients.

• Take a look at an online, for-profit model (in which I participate) that also supports face-to-face gatherings that are organized and hosted by members – biznik.

• Or start or join a MeetUp of your peers. I belong to the Bay Area Reporters and Journalists organized by Susan Kuchinskas.

Why explore these ideas?

Because, if your expertise or experience matches the interest of a distinct niche market, then the approach outlined in this post enables you to enlarge your circle of friends and/or make money in supporting others’ strong needs or interests.

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How We Can Savor Learning and Inventing Together

Haven't some of your most meaningful memories been of times when you accomplished something greater with others? Didn't it bring you closer in the flow of camaraderie - even when someone in your group didn't act right - like you?'

What we learn from those times is vital in an information-flooded, connected world - and that's a good thing.

The most common and satisfying ways we learn and invent are not from sitting in a classroom seat being taught or trained. The world is too complex and fluid now to keep up with everything all by yourself.

That doesn't mean that we aren't sought-after for our mastery of a topic or skill. It simply means we stay relevant when we engage in projects with diverse others, learning and experimenting as we go. Like children we still learn best by observing, imitating, re-mixing, making fresh mistakes and, most of all, by playing and using our imagination - with others.

That's why the new book by Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown, The New Culture of Learning, two long time lovers of social learning-by-doing is so relevant today for students of all ages, in school, at work and involved with the causes and projects that most matter to us.

While their book is aimed at transforming learning in schools every concept I read can be equally applied to any part of our lives - lived well with others.

If you'd like to see the next chapters of your life as the kind of adventure story you co-create with others and want a bigger voice in the role you play - literally - read and share this book with those you think will make engrossing, imaginative playmates.

Some of my favorite quotes from this book:

* The new culture of learning gives us the freedom to make the general personal and then share our personal experience in a way that, in turn, adds to the general flow of knowledge.

* In the new culture of learning, people learn through their interaction and participation with one another in fluid relationships that are the result of shared interests and opportunity.

* Play is the tension between the rules of the game and the freedom to act within those rules. When play happens while learning it creates a context in which information, ideas and passions grow.

* The important thing about the Harry Potter phenomenon is not so much what the kids were learning, but how they were learning. Thought there was no teacher in this setting, readers engaged in deep, sustained learning from one another through their discussions and interactions.

* In a world of near constant flux, play becomes a strategy for embracing change rather than a way of growing out of it.

* The challenge is to find ways to marry structure and freedom to create altogether new things.

* Study groups dramatically increase the success of college students in the classroom.

* The connection between the personal and the collective is a key ingredient in lifelong learning.

* When information is stable, the explicit dimension becomes very important. The speed of light, for example, is probably not going to change....The twenty-first centry, however, belongs to the tacit. In the digital world we learn by doing, watching, and experiencing... not by taking a class or reading a manual.

* Students learn best when they are able to follow their passion and opeate within the constraints of a bounded environment. Without the boundary set by the assignment there would be no medium for growth.

* Indwelling is a familiarity with ideas, practices and processes that are so ingrained that they become second nature. When engaging the learner, we must think about her sense of indwelling, because that is her greatest source of inspiration, but it is also the largest reservoir she has of tacit knowledge.

* Dispositions indicate how a student will make connections on a tacit level... how she is likely to learn.

* Learning from others is neither new nor revolutionary; it has just been ignored by most of our educational institutions...

... and, I would add, by most of our organizations.

From the people under 30 who grew up studying and playing in groups I have enjoyed playing and co-creating on everything from business start-ups to models of more effectively serving causes.

I hope that a version of this book is put up online for shareable input from us all - commenting, adapting, re-mixing the ideas, thus turning it into an ecosystem where we can hone our ideas on the new culture of, not "just" learning but also inventing and co-creating better ways to work and play together.

See the book here

http://www.amazon.com/New-Culture-Learning-Cultivating-Imagination/product-re...

You may also enjoy another book, co-authored by John Seely Brown, Pull.The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion

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How to Learn Faster and Remember More

It’s sunny outside yet you’re stuck studying. You must know this stuff for tomorrow. It gets worse. Your smart aleck friend walks by saying “You know you’ll only remember ten percent of what you’re reading right now.” She’s citing an oft-repeated study that shows that, six weeks later, you’ll only remember four percent of what you are passively learning by reading.

Yet that familiar study has been debunked. Or rather there never was a study that showed people remember:

10% of what they read

20% of what they hear

30% of what they see

50% of what they see and hear

70% of what they write and say

90% of what they say as they do something with the information

“People do NOT remember 10% of what they read, 20% of what they see, 30% of what they hear, etc.,” learning expert, Will Thalheimer emphatically explains.

So the percentages aren’t proven yet the levels for accelerating learning are. You do learn faster and remember more when you move from passive to active, meaningful, repeated engagement in what you are learning.

Your Useable insight

You’ll learn more and remember it longer when you:

• Actively and repeatedly practice what you are learning, as you are learning it, and when you continuously relate it to something concrete that matters to you.

• Teach others what we are learning.

So, skip the percentages and speed your learning by adopting themethods described in Dale's Cone of Experience. After learning this it may be helpful to sleep on it.

See links here http://sayitbetter.typepad.com/say_it_better/2009/09/how-to-learn-faster-and-remember-more.html

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Women: Knowing When Fear is a Friend

A gang rape of a teen girl, took place over several hours at a high school, with onlookers who did nothing. It happened just last month in an adjacent county to where I live. Among the many reactions to this horrific incident, here’s the first that’s positive and proactive for women, albeit an action than can seem self-serving.

A local author is co-offering a free self-defense class. As someone who chronicled her recovery from violent abuse in her book, Skinny, Tan and Rich: Unveiling the Myth, Maryanne Comaroto will teach emotional self-defense techniques. Her colleague will teach physical self-defense techniques.

Comaroto’s core message is “TLC: Trust yourself, love yourself and control yourself." Reflecting the insights in security firm founder Gavin DeBecker’s excellent book, The Gift of Fear, Comaroto suggests that, “One of the things we typically don’t do is trust our intuition. It’s the first indicator we maybe in danger.“

That’s the money quote for me, one I hope each of us has grown into knowing and doing by this stage in our lives.

Whenever you’ve felt profound fear, it was linked to the presence of danger, imminent pain or death. Said DeBecker in a National Public Radio interview, “When we get a fear signal, our intuition has already made many connections. When you feel fear, try to ‘link’ it back to a past situation where the feeling that was similar to see if your fear is, in fact, justified.”

While the media often portrays human violence as random, de Becker points out that it seldom is random. In fact, you can anticipate the patterns of impending danger in most cases, if you listen to your instinct of genuine fear and take action. DeBecker’s book offers specific criteria for how you can better protect yourself by learning to recognize and act on the intuitive signals you pick up but reject as unfounded.

Worry, on the other hand, is the fear we manufacture. Worry, anxiety, concern and wariness all have a purpose, but they are not fear. Any time your dreaded outcome cannot be reasonably linked to pain or death and it isn’t a signal in the presence of danger, then it really should not be confused with fear.

Worry is a form of self-harassment.

Worry will not bring solutions. Worry distracts from finding solutions.

To free yourself from worry sooner, understand what it really is. Most people worry because it provides some secondary reward such as:

• Worry is a way to avoid change; when we worry, we don’t do anything about the matter.

• Worry allows us to avoid admitting powerlessness over something, since worry feels like we’re doing something. Prayer also makes us feel like we’re doing something, and even the most committed agnostic will admit that prayer is more productive than worry.

• Worry is a cloying way to have a connection with others. Worry somehow shows love. The other side of this is the beleif that not worrying about someone means you don’t care about that person. As many people who’ve been worried about know well, worry is a poor substitute for love or for taking loving action.

• Worry is a protection against future disappointment. After you complete an important project where the success of your approach won’t be known for some while, for example, you can worry about it.

Ostensibly, if you can feel the experience of failure now, rehearse it, so to speak, by worrying about it, then failing won’t feel as bad when it happens. But how would you want to spend the time while you find out: worrying, playing or initiating another action on another endeavor?

There is a Pay-off for Worry But Not a Healthy One

For some people, worrying is a “magical amulet”, according to Emotional Intelligence author, Daniel Goleman. Some people feel it wards off danger. They truly believe that worrying about something will stop it from happening.

Most of what people worry about has a low probability of occurring, because we tend to take action about those things we feel are likely to occur. This means that very often the mere fact that you are worrying about something is a predictor that it isn’t likely to happen.

The connection between real fear and worry is similar to the relationship between pain and suffering. Pain and fear are necessary and valuable components of life. Suffering and worry are destructive and unnecessary parts of life. Worry interrupts clear thinking, wastes time, and shortens your life.

When worrying, ask yourself, “How does this serve me?”

To be freer of fear and yet still get its gift, consider these techniques:

1. When you feel fear, listen.

2. When you don’t feel fear, don’t manufacture it.

3. If you find yourself creating worry, explore and discover why.

We Choke on Anxiety

Anxiety, unlike real fear and like worry, is always caused by uncertainty. it is caused, ultimately, by predictions in which you have little confidence. If you predict you will be fired and you are certain that your prediction is correct, you don’t have anxiety about being fired, but about the ramifications of losing a job.

Predictions in which you have a high confidence free you to respond, adjust, feel sadness, accept, prepare, or to do whatever you need to do. You can reduce your anxiety by improving your predictions, thus increasing your certainty. It’s worth doing, because the word anxiety, like worry, stems from a root that means “to choke,” and that is just what it does to us.

Our imaginations can be fertile soil in which worry and anxiety grow from seeds to weeds, but when we assume the imagined outcome is a sure thing, we are in conflict with what Proust called an inexorable law: “Only that which is absent can be imagined.” In other words, what you imagine -- just like what you fear -- is not happening.

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How Do You Become Genuinely Enthusiastic?

“Enthusiasm is not the same as just being excited. One gets excited about going on a roller coaster. One becomes enthusiastic about creating and building a roller coaster.“ ~ Bo Bennett

Getting enthusiasm is a little like learning to breathe.

Nobody can tell you exactly how to do it, but without it you’re in big trouble. No one but you can discover that compelling purpose or exciting goal that ignites enthusiasm inside you, but you can learn a great deal from noticing how others use it to get more done while savoring their life.

This is what I’ve learned from some real life experts on enthusiasm; what’s more, I’ve tested them in the laboratory of my own life.

"It is faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes life worth living." ~ Oliver Wendall Holmes

1. Enthusiasm is born on the inside

In the daily grind of life you can lose touch with what really matters. There are so many routine decisions to make, so many challenges to be met, and so many burdens to carry, that you may get dispirited and act out an unbecoming side in yourself. However, as you connect with the enthusiasm planted deep within you, you’ll feel it begin to grow and grow. Soon, you’ll be back on track.

Hint: It’s not the first mile of a long and arduous journey that gets to you — you’re excited about getting started. And it’s not the last mile — you’re thrilled about getting there.

The miles that can drag you down are the long and tedious ones in the middle where you can’t see where you are coming from or where you are going.

“None are so old as those who have out-lived enthusiasm.”~ Henry David Thoreau

2. Enthusiasm grows when you focus on opportunities, solutions and allies - not problems, circumstances and critics.

Life for you will always be as you choose to see it. Focus your attention on the problems and circumstances that surround you, or keep your eyes on the solutions and opportunities.

I read a story that illustrates this approach. Several farmers in Pennsylvania were sitting in a café, complaining about the increasing cost of electricity and the unpleasant task of disposing of all the waste their cows generated.

But the Waybright brothers and their brother-in-law, who run the Mason Dixon Farms near the town where I went to college, Gettysburg, decided to quit complaining about all the manure the cows were generating, and to do some generating of their own — electricity.

They built a power generator that runs on methane gas produced from heated manure from the 2,000 cows. Generating much of their own power, they cut their annual electricity bill from $30,000 to $15,000.

As you might guess, most of the other farmers laughed at the project and called it “Waybright’s folly” (and other even less flattering names). They were satisfied to see their problems and to seek out their Congressmen to complain about their miserable circumstances.

But no one’s laughing anymore.

In fact farmers and agriculture ministers from around the world beat a path to the Mason Dixon farms. Soon the Waybright brothers were selling some of their excess power to their once jeering neighbors.

Enthusiasm — with all the good things that go with it — comes when you turn your eyes from the problem or circumstance and focus on the solution and opportunity. Cash can buy, but it takes enthusiasm to sell – or otherwise sway or collaborate.

“Enthusiasm is the yeast that raises the dough.” ~ Paul J. Meyer

3. Enthusiasm thrives around positive people

Like smiling, enthusiasm is contagious. Worse yet, negativism and pessimism are far more contagious. It is always easier to believe the worst than to hope for the best — especially if you are struggling against overwhelming odds. It’s even worse when you’re tired, or have just suffered a severe setback.

Don’t waste your creative energies on people who are always putting you and your ideas down. Seek out positive, competent individuals where you can give each other candid feedback – and a boost. Enthusiasm is contagious. Unfortunately, so is the lack of it. .

4. Enthusiasm recharges itself on momentum

Jerry Reed’s popular song of many years ago is apt: “When you’re hot, you’re hot!”

William Shakespeare put similar sentiments into the mouth of Julius Caesar: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries.’”

Enthusiasm comes from the inside out, not vice versa. It’s when you feel most enthusiastic that you need to throw yourself into life’s biggest challenge. Celebrate your greatest victories by plunging into even greater challenges. Take full advantage of the momentum you gain with each hard-earned step.

Nothing feeds enthusiasm like success, and nothing can hold back enough enthusiasm.

See links here http://sayitbetter.typepad.com/say_it_better/2010/09/how-do-you-become-genuinely-enthusiastic.html

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Quotability: Compared to What?

To heal a bitterly divided nation, Nelson Mandela characterized “our” goal of bringing the World Cup to South Africa in his motto, "One Team One Country."

Want to instantly shape how others feel about you or something that really matters to you? Set the context by making a vivid comparison.

Those who are fighting for more nutritious school lunches did exactlythat recently. "A McDonald's burger is safer than your kid's school lunch.  The government has given schools meat that would have been rejected by many fast-food restaurants across the country."  Wow.

Yes, negative comparisons, even more than positive ones, stick in the mind. It was back in college when my friend Jim told me his hometown, Stockton, was sometimes called “the armpit of the west.”

Make comparisons using analogies, similes and metaphors.

Here’s a rebutting analogy you may not forget yet wish you could, “It's absurd that we only have an oral tablet to treat vomiting. It's like treating diarrhea with a suppository.”

Metaphors are the most powerful of these three attitude-changers. Security expert Michael Spearman gave a metaphor. He characterized the prevalence of nonworking cameras in housing projects as "Using cameras without having anyone monitor them is like buying a condom and then punching holes in it.”

Mixed metaphors aren’t effective behavior-changers yet often a source of humor:

“When Frank smells blood, you’re toast.”

“It’s a long road to open a can of worms.”

The more vivid, credible and relevant your comparison the more likely it is that others will repeat it. Repetition creates familiarity. Familiarity hastens acceptance.

What comparisons have influenced your beliefs and behavior?

Now, want to trick your mind (or other’s) into making smarter choices?

See links to this post here: http://sayitbetter.typepad.com/say_it_better/2009/12/index.html

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The Priceless Power of Memorable Naming

True Love was the name of college friend Jim’s beloved Alfa Romeo. Why? Because, as he admitted repeatedly, “It never runs smooth.” Ah the power of naming something.

What will we dub this decade? What will you name your new effort? “I want to define myself before someone else does,” George W. Bush said as he took office. Similarly yet perhaps more successfully you want to make your brand name so memorable that other’s less flattering nicknames don’t become more popular.

If, for example, you want your product to seem swift and reliable then give it a name that has an “e”’ in it to evoke speed and a “b” for reliability. So suggest linguists. That’s why that vital gadget Obama won’t give up was not named Strawberry (“straw sounds slow”) but alliteratively dubbed the Blackberry. Avid users soon adopted the irreverent, stickier name - Crackberry. Yet many made-up names, especially hybrids of other names, sound bland and forgettable, especially those for scientific or medical companies and products.

Qualcomm may be intended to mean quality communication yet it evokes a soulless corporation to me. And the angular typeface looks like it was designed by an introverted mechanical engineer.

And does Verizon make you think of “horizon,” as in forward-looking. Does it remind you of anything? Does it evoke a positive emotion – or any emotion at all?

(No, I am not talking about the actual service you may have experienced.)

Or does to Intel instantly cause the image of “intelligent” and “electronics” come to mind?

Does Cialis sound “sensual” or remind you of “relationships” as the company intends? Or, only slightly less euphemistically, “a couple’s desire to engage romantically?" Any doubt that a committee involving their pr and legal department concocted with that phrase? Like Viagra, when companies spend millions on advertising many of us finally got the point. Ahem.

Sometimes, but rarely, a company needs to hide behind its name.

While psycholinguists were involved in naming Prozac and Zoloft, neither relate to a real world image, are easy to remember, nor do they evoke an emotion – positive or negative.

Perhaps the big corporations are trying too hard – or are wary of taking on the risk for naming so they subcontract it out.

That doesn’t mean you have to.

As a usually upbeat person I’ll stop this rant now.

Memorable Labels Can Shift Perspectives, Then Opinions

Here’s a simple secret to creating names that stick in the minds of your kind of customer:

Evoke a familiar image that has an emotional, commonly-viewed trait that reflects and reinforces  the Main Differentiating Benefit of your service, product or company.

As a Fallback Evoke the “Familiar Effect”

At least use the name of a familiar object upon which you can project your own emotional brand image – like Apple, reflecting the crisp, clean, simple and “tasty” design of Apple’s products. (What do you think if the rumored name of their new product?)

Or make up a name that easily and emotionally evokes the image that highlight the main benefit. Spicy Baconator sounds like a hearty serving of something with bacon in it. This name reinforces themouthwatering intensity of the double cheeseburger photo that appears next to it.

Warning: Be sure to say the name out loud to avoid embarrassment. I’ll bet PETA has taken a lot of ribbing for its first blog title.

And some names are just too precious- even for their upscale, ever-so-politically correct (0rganic only) market.

For more ideas on naming see the blogs Igor,Business Naming Basics, Strategic Name Development and The Kitchen Sink. Notice how much easier it is to remember the names of the first and last blogs I just listed?)

Find links here http://sayitbetter.typepad.com/say_it_better/2009/12/index.html

Also consider perusing these related posts:

Save Your Unborn Baby from Embarrassment Later in Life

The Art of Naming: How to Make it Positively Stand Out

Where Do You Want People to Focus Their Attention When With You?

One for One: Creating Slogans and Subtitles

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Be Someone Who Attracts Smart Support ... Sooner

Research shows that Americans are most likely to trust and support someone who exhibits strong listening and inclusion skills. These traits matter even more than charisma. Those sought-after people - the major nodes on the invisible organizational chart that reflects the real centers of influence - are different than the leaders of just a decade ago.

"Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind
than in the one where they sprung up."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

In this Age of Engagement, the trait they are most likely to share is the capacity to speak to the sweet spot of mutual interest.

In most conversations they begin, not by talking about themselves but byaddressing the other person’s specific need or opportunity.

Then they move on to describe how there’s a shared interest or way of accomplishing something together that cannot be done alone.

While many experts on leadership such as Warren Bennis and Steve Covey offer valuable ideas on what leadership should look like, two research studies, one by the U.S. Air Force and another from M.I.T. show that people are more likely to seek out and support people who exhibited at least three of seven behavioral traits of what I’ve dubbed the “Synthesizer-Style Leader". Remarkably, these traits mattered more than ethnicity, sex, ethnicity, apparent wealth, physical size, education or even appearance.

“A true leader is not one you look up to because they are the best.
A true leader is one that draws the best out in you.”
~ Anne Warfield

These leaders succeed because they bring out the most productive side of their colleagues. While this new style of most valuable player (MVP) does make her presence felt in her organization, she is much less likely than old-style leaders to take center stage, voice an opinion early in a situation or take charge of projects. Instead she sets a single goal and a goal for each team and each person, leaving it to them to propose the smartest path forward Thus these leaders do not need total quality management programs because they set a goal for and reward self-organized teams.

“All value resides in individuals.
Value is distributed in individual space.
Relationship economics is the framework for wealth creation.
Deep support is the new metaproduct.”
~ Shoshanna Zuboff

The Synthesizer-Style Leaders' behavioral traits are described here as rules to work by. Often, I find them difficult to follow yet not as arduous as ignoring them:

1. "Go slow to go fast"
At the beginning of every task or interaction, do everything lower, slower less - in moving and speaking - so that you get "in sync" and can then establish a common direction and involvement so that when you pick up speed later on, everybody is eager to be on board.

2. Create the Common Vision
Vividly characterize the direct benefit to the listener up front, for providing support, even if it is a part of his job anyway. Then characterize how the expected support directly relates to one of the top goals of your organization, the upside and down side of doing the work.

3. Play Straight
Announce the rules upfront - penalities and rewards for participation in a team activity or project or job - and don't change them mid-stream without a compelling reason.

4. Play it Back
Seek and reward candid feedback on an ongoing basis, and respond specifically and soon to what you’ve been told, including the rational about the action you will or will not take, based upon that feedback.

5. Synthesize the Best
Listen, ask, ask more, then synthesize others' ideas as a way of proposing new action.

6. Give Third Party Endorsements
Offer specific, genuine praise for others' contributions from anywhere in the company; praise them to those who are important to them and in ways that reflect their highest self-image and values.

7. Walk Your Talk
Demonstrate a congruency in all that you do; make and keep agreements; reflect a clear set of core personal values that people can trust you'll keep, regardless of whether they share those values.

“In everybody’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.
It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.
We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner fire.”
~ Albert Schweitzer

See more ideas like this at http://sayitbetter.typepad.com

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Choose Collaborations That Use Your Best Talents

Many of us have been tested for intelligence or temperament. Few have been given an assessment that enables them to recognize the specific situations in which they thrive and grow. Yet, without that insight we get stuck doing mediocre work in situations we don’t enjoy and with people who do not bring out our better sides. Just a few of those dispiriting experiences can create self-fulfilling prophecies that we can’t expect much from close collaboration in work or life with others.

Conversely it takes remarkably little nudges to enable us to lift our spirits and to become happier and high-performing with others.  Here are three things you can do:

1. When describing something that just happened

 or in your past, notice if it is anchored by a positive or a negative incident. Those who are most resilient, energetic, caring and involved with others tend to link their stories to redemptive themes.  Those who are plagued by down moods often mark their stories with what went wrong and don’t include a redeeming detail.  These narrative themes affect our choices — what we think we have to choose from – and how others see us.

2. We each have many personalities inside us. Some situations enable us to use our best talents and display our best side. Instead of attempting to be a “virtuoso juggler” as many women do, discover the specific situations where you thrive. When you can identify those moments you are better able, like a defensive driver, to see potential danger farther ahead where situations or individuals spark your discomfort or worse.

Conversely, knowing where you shine (temperament and talent) means you can make smarter choices about how you work and live – and with whom.  While Marcus Buckingham’s book is intended for women I know three male friends who have found it helpful in how they seek the situations that best serve them, professionally, personally and socially.

3. We each have a set point along the continuum of pessimistic to optimistic. After winning the lottery or experiencing the death of a loved one, we eventually return to that set point.

Since those who are on the positive end of that range are more likely to thrive, have friends and advance in their work, you might want to practice specific ways of “acting as if” you are more optimistic that are described in Learned Optimism and Authentic Happiness.

Those who instinctively react more negatively or helplessly to difficult situations tend to experience it as the “three Ps”: Personal (most of all it happened to me) Pervasive (now everything feels worse in my life), and Permanent (it will always be this bad).

One caveat that makes it worth having friends at the other end of the spectrum:  Optimists tend to be overly rosy about a situation, leaping into opportunities that, in fact, aren’t while pessimists are more realistic – seeing what is. 

Together they are more likely to see potential problems and to find solutions. They are also more likely to squabble because the other person doesn’t act right – like them.

So it helps to laugh when you recognize when it that is starting to happen.

“Human communities depend upon diversity of talent, not a singular conception of ability.” ~ Ken Robinson

See links for this blog post at http://dovetailcollab.wordpress.com and see and share your favorite ways to collaborate at the DovetailCollaboration community http://www.dovetailcollaboration.com/

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