The Snoop Shows How You Display Who You Are, Even When You Don’t Mean to

The Snoop Shows How You Display Who You Are, Even When You Don’t Mean to

How We Tell Others Who We Are

On this Memorial Day weekend, what are we signaling when we flood Facebook with slogans and images of salutes to our troops and the “Likes” that follow?

Certainly we intend to honor soldiers who serve our country, yet there’s more to this “contagious phenomenon.” “It’s about the urge to be known, just like getting a tattoo or putting a bumper sticker on the car or running up the flag in front of the house on Monday,’ says Snoop author, Sam Gosling. “These are all “symbolic acts — part of identity claiming, of saying to the world, ‘This is who I am.’”

What are you inadvertently revealing?

When looking at college students’ rooms, did you know that displaying inspirational posters signals a neurotic?” Or that a male with an organized space with sports décor tends to be conservative? Or that liberals are more likely to have a messy room with books, an eclectic music collection and maps?

From your bedroom to your car or office, you show secrets about yourself to others.  From the pet you choose, to where you sit in a group, to the clothes you wear, you are constantly revealing what you most value, how you feel about yourself and others, how you view the world and want to be treated… and more.

You are showing, for example, whether you are more extroverted or introverted.

What you don’t display is also revealing.

Even the ambiance of a place can be determined by the profiles of the Foursquare users who visit it.

Sam Gosling has been snooping around for some years. Since he’s an academic he labels his work with words like environment and personality. Of the five major personality traits, three — openness, conscientiousness and extroversion — are displayed in people’s spaces, Gosling suggests. The other two, neuroticism and agreeableness are more internal.

Betrayed by your desk? “Your desk is actually a window into your personality,” says Gosling. “An empty desk often indicates dissatisfaction with or a lack of dedication to a job. An overgrown fern says a worker is there to stay …?Every single element, every item, got here somehow.”

How do you mark your territory?

Here are clues from Gosling that I’ve summarized:

Identity Claim

Like rolling down your car window when your radio is on, you are sharing statements of who you are.  The self-directed identity claim is a deliberate statement by a person to express his/her personality. For example, Gosling said, an American flag mouse pad expresses a person’s patriotism.

Behavior Residue

Some actions leave a trace in the environment. Gosling says if your desk is neat or cluttered, it may say: “I’m trying to have some organization,” or “I feel too busy to put things back in order.”

Thought and Feeling Regulators

These help people feel a certain way. For example, a person may play music to help them focus or put a living plant on his/her desk to surround themselves with nice things. We all have the profound desire to be seen and understood. In the 1970’s two psychologists developed a quiz to determine an individual’s “need for uniqueness,” willingness to conform and to express disagreement.

With Gosling’s guidance, Jeff Potter provides the updated test you can take for free.

Is your dog’s personality compatible with yours? Gosling can help you find out and also help you rate your pet dog on four key personality traits, with positive and negative extremes.

Are You Sending Conflicting Signals That Cause Conflict?

Since we may be sending mixed signals and, according to Gosling, we probably see ourselves differently than other view us to recognizing our signals and reduce the chance of misunderstanding and friction.  Consider the “bright spots”, “dark spots” and “blind spots” in your relationships with those closest to you.

Gosling’s remarkably disparate research on behavior and territory has been cited by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink, David M. Buss in The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind Is Designed to Kill and Annie Murphy Paul in The Cult of Personality.

Like to discover more about the ways our everyday environments (bedrooms, medicine cabinets, offices, cars, etc.) betray our personalities? Read Secret Language of Stuff: Surprising Insights from the New Science of Snooping.

Then, if you are ready to turn the page on your life to jump into the adventure story you were meant to live, read Moving From Me to We, with over 300 tips on how to become more frequently-quoted, sought-after, and appreciated. Discover specific ways to partner to become top-of-mind in your profession.

Learn practical ways to collaborate to accomplish something greater with others than you can on your own.

This eBook is packed with real life examples, what-if scenarios, steps and pitfalls to avoid.

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Accomplishing greater things 

T O G E T H E R

415.331.6336 ~ Kare@SayitBetter.com

Talk on Twitter? @kareanderson

http://www.sayitbetter.com/speak

http://www.movingfrommetowe.com

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Communicate to Connect

Moving From Me to We

What Most Disturbs Women About Men?

They don’t listen.

Some women are nodding as they read this and some men feel prickles of irritation.

And what do men most resent about women other than not enough, well, you know?  Women try to change (“improve”) their man.

You’ve probably experienced, first hand, a related bone of contention. More than once.Women talk too much.  Men, not enough.

But is it true? Perhaps not if you’re in college, according to some who disagree with a new study published in Science magazine.

“Conventional wisdom: women use 20,000 words a day, men 7,000. Come cocktail hour, hubby played out. Wife frustrated: 13,000 words to go, no takers. Bad for sex,” writes Donald G. McNeil, Jr. in a pithy, humorous piece in the New York Times.

Perhaps feeling that this 

finding

 was not based on solid research, my fellow Sausalitan, Louann Brizendine removed it from the later editions of her wildly popular book, Female Brain.

Then there’s the perception that women tend to remember more of what’s happened in past conversations with her man.

Men remember much less and don’t appreciate it, naturally, when their woman brings up their past “mistakes”, especially as part of a perceived pattern when describing a current hurt or disagreement.

That’s one reason some eventually leave.

Yet many of us believe that speaking to, not the down side of our differences, but rather the sweet spot of shared interests and positive feelings with someone who is quite different is precious opportunity for greater growth and adventure, in friendship, work and, yes, love.

If you (or someone you know) is on either side of these intimacy-breakers consider perusing How to Improve Your Marriage Without Talking About It (now that’s a popular title).

Let’s conclude with a bit of humor from that columnist, Donald McNeil:

“Man: Study here says women talk twice as much as men.

Wife: Of course we do. We have to repeat everything we say.

Man: What?”

Now, are you ready for turning the page to the next chapter of the adventure story you were meant to live?

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Accomplishing greater things 

T O G E T H E R

Talk on Twitter? @kareanderson

http://www.sayitbetter.com/speak

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Communicate to Connect

Stay Sought-after by Honing Two Traits

“We are moving from sharing to cooperation to collective action,” wrote Clay Shirky. “Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than in the one where they sprung up,” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. noted long ago.

Yet to fully benefit from these insights one must be perceived as valuable. The more valuable you are perceived to be, the more frequently you’ll be invited to participate.

How do we demonstrate value in this increasingly connected and complex world?  By being widely-known and respected for having a:

1. Vital talent, in fact being one of the best at that skill.

2. Reputation for being a strong team player or leader

One trait enormously leverages the value of another. Some have a much-needed skill yet provoke conflict by their participation. Others are nimble team players yet some are better at the sought-after skill and can also be good team players.

That’s why it behooves us to cultivate four behaviors:

1. Hone our top talent and be able to describe, in plain yet vivid language, the situations in which it is most needed.

2.  Cultivate others who:

• Are also passionate about continuously strengthening their main talent

• Have talents that are different than yours

• Share at least one sweet spot of mutual interest on which you could work together

3. Practice ways to productively collaborate with others. As Charles Darwin observed, “In the long history of humankind…those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”

Adept collaborators tend to be upbeat and open rather than pessimistic, have aflexible rather than a fixed mindset and be adept listeners. Without those traits, as Stanislaw Jerzy Lec once wrote, “Thoughts, like fleas, can jump from man to man, but they don’t bite everybody.”

4. Be generous in proactively sharing information and introductions with those who are your “weak links” and potentially complementary project partners as well, as with close friends. As you have noticed, some people mostly want to give, and others are inclined to take.

Both perpetuate out-of-balance relationships in which resentment inevitable builds. Still others have mastered the healthy art of receiving and giving that builds ever stronger, enduring relationships where both individuals can be fully present, candid, caring.

That’s when the magic happens.

We bring out the best side in each other.

We are more likely to use our best talents in support of each other and together.

This approach is key to turning the next chapter of your life into the adventure story you can relish with others, the one you were meant to live.

Want to learn more than 300 specific ways to jumpstart that next chapter?

Read Moving From Me to We.

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Communicate to Connect

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Attract Smarter Support Sooner and Savor Your Life More With Others

“When you throw mud you get dirty,” Adlai Stephenson once remarked in response to a question about whether he would criticize his opponent who was launching vicious, personal attacks against him in a political campaign.

And you lose ground.

Yet many politicos say negative campaigning and ads are effective in attracting votes so they are forced to run them, and, in this run-up to the mid-term elections, those on-line and on-airattacks abound.

Some are sleazy and real nasty. Watch, for example, Vanderbilt political scientist John Geer discuss the use of negative adsby both parties in a past mid-term election cycle. Yet, some researchers disagree with this conventional wisdom.

Look Good to Others Via Spontaneous Trait Transference

Here is reinforcement for you to praise the part in someone (however small and rarely demonstrated) that you genuinely admire when you are tempted, in the moment, 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.”

“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? Trait transference. So by being more generous and enthusiastic, I’ll be helping my own reputation as well as other people’s.”

Invisibly Nudge Them to Act Nicer When Around You

Here’s what also happens.

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

Compliment him on his planning that weekend trip (never mind that it is 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 using 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.)

Act As If They’re Being Wonderful and They Might Become Wonderful

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 long to be understood and loved for who we are we instinctively put up barriers to being known.  Yet we are constantly revealing our personal operating manual – what makes us work well with other people.

Here is now we display it.

We praise others for traits and behaviors we like in ourselves (whether or not others actually view us the way we see ourselves. And we give others the gifts, experiences and other resources we’d like to receive.

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 much more effective way to bring out other’s better side, and to get them to like and support you.

Adopt the Golden Golden Rule: Do unto others as they would have done unto them. Praise the character traits and actions 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 for you in honing those traits. Describe the kind of verbal and behavioral support that you find most helpful and gratifying.

Now that step represents a golden, golden opportunity 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 are more likely to see and support yours. That’s no small achievement, even if it happens just some of the time. With this approach you are more likely to accomplish something greater with others than you can on your own.

Consider it one more step towards Learned Optimism and to Stumbling on Happiness.  In the spirit of Moving From Me to We, consider sharing your related insights with me onFacebook and Twitter and bringing me to speak at your conference or other meeting or receive coaching.

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Accomplishing greater things 

T O G E T H E R

Talk on Twitter? @kareanderson

http://www.sayitbetter.com/speak

http://www.movingfrommetowe.com

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Communicate to Connect

From Odd Places Pull in Fresh Adventures and Friendships

Five men are walking across the Golden Gate Bridge on an outing organized by their wives who are college friends. The women move ahead in animated conversation. One man describes the engineering involved in the bridge’s long suspension. Another points to the changing tide lines below. A third asked if they’ve heard of the new phone apps for walking tours. The fourth observes how refreshing it is to talk with people who aren’t lawyers like him.

Yes, we tend to notice the details that most relate to our work or our life experience.

It is also no surprise that we instinctively look for those who share our interests. This is especially true in times of increasing pressure and uncertainty. We have an understandable tendency in such times to seek out the familiar and comfortable as a buffer against the disruptive changes surrounding us. In so doing we can inadvertently put ourselves in a cage of similarity that narrows our peripheral vision of the world and our options.

The result? We can be blindsided by events and trends coming at us from directions we did not see.

The Big Sort author, Bill Bishop , provides a compelling view of population movements in the United States over the past several decades.  He shows that Americans are increasingly seeking out neighborhoods where people share them same political and cultural values, right down to the cars they drive and the movies they watch. We become more polarized when we hang out with others who act right – like us, often missing the pieces that could give us a more complete view of a situation.

Instead we become more certain we are right.

We are reducing our peripheral vision and creating what Jonathan Haidt calls a morecontentious culture. That’s a barrier to the most fruitful, satisfying kind of collaboration:  individuals sharing a sweet spot of mutual interest, leveraging value because they view the situation from different vantage points.

That where the richest, most unexpected camaraderie springs up as we experience different sides of our selves, responding to others who don’t always act right – like us.

Worse yet, to generate more value for advertisers, many of the sites we visit attempt to silo us around our similarities. They do this by tracking what we most watch and click on, to most visibly present more of the same kind of topics and people we seem to like. That discovery inspired Eli Pariser to write The Filter Bubble .

The more we see reinforcing evidence that we are right in our beliefs the more rigid we become in defending them. So found Going to Extremes author Cass Sunstein.

Here are five ways to keep honing your talents, growing, staying flexible and open to new ideas and pulling in comrades for fresh adventures.

1. We each have many facets to ourselves, found Rita Carter, author of Multiplicity.  Create more adventures in your unfolding life story by cultivating diverse friendships, matching more of your facets with others in ways that bring out the best temperament and talents in each other.  What a waste to let parts of yourself atrophy. That’s akin to not using all the features on a favorite product or experiencing other sides of your friends and colleagues.

2. With strangers — especially those who are different than your usual crowd – you can project a different part of your personality, discovered the authors ofConsequential Strangers, Melinda Blau and Karen L. Fingerman. As you act differently, so will others will respond differently, than usual to you, sometimes sparking unexpected turns to the conversation and your perspective on a situation.

3. Participate in organizations that feed your diverse passions and enable you to hone your strengths in them. Marci Albohor shared stories of individuals with “multiple professions and multiple identities can converge into a unified–and better–life” in her book, One Person/Multiple Careers, now re-released by her as an eBook.

4. If you are part of a large association, synagogue, civic group or special interest club, encourage the organization to support the creation of self-organized, special interest groups of no more than seven people, providing a few suggestions of they could operate. Provide a private-to-the-organization online community where groups can compare notes on what they are learning, ways to self-organize and offer and ask for help from other groups.

Such loosely affiliated small groups within a larger organization deepen a sense of belonging, help more people learn from diverse others and stay open to growing through that shared learning and collaboration.  That’s one way members of Rick Warren’s large Saddleback Church have maintained a close-knit feeling yet continue to grow in fresh ways, according to Malcolm Gladwell’s account of the cellular church. I’ve found that many of Mark Howell’s ideas for how churches thrive through fostering small groups can be adapted to other organizations.

Similarly the innovative outdoor gear company Gore-Tex has nimbly grown by using their version of self-organized teams of 150 or less within the larger corporation. In fact, they give grants to those who further their learning about that philosophy when adapted to outdoor adventure, traveling in compact groups of “close friends who had mutual respect and trust for one another.”

5.  Share an experience with a former foe in an unfamiliar situation. Because George W. Bush and Bill Clinton have quite different beliefs and temperaments, they probably learned more from each other during their joint visit to earthquake-stricken Haiti in 2010.  They could observe different ways of interacting with people as well as of collecting ideas about how to help the situation.

Leo Tolstoy wrote that, “Once we’ve thrown off our habitual paths, we think all is lost; but it’s only here that the new and the good begins.”  why not seek out opportunities to share an experience with others who have different talents, opinions and ways of operating in the world. I learn more and can hone other sides of myself I’d let slide because of getting stuck in a rut of habit. That’s one of the lessons from Jim Collins: “What often gets in the way of being great is being good at something.”

My goals are more modest, perhaps.

I’ll settle for the sometimes fractious yet often adventuresome times with people who, because they don’t act right like me, spark conversations and experiences where we can see ourselves and this wondrous life in fresh ways. And, yes, we sometimes accomplish something greater together than we can on our own, That makes life more satisfying and more meaningful. See more at http://www.sayitbetter.com/speak/ or follow Kare on Twitter @KareAnderson

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Communicate to Connect

How to Take Care of Your Team So They Take Care of You

Joe Lee was sitting at a table, rapidly counting rain jackets in a small room somewhere above the sumptuous lobby of the Jamaican hotel where I was to speak at a corporate conference the next morning. I did not know who he was then, although he looked familiar. I was just told that the man in that room could tell me if there was a spare space for me to go on the rainforest tour arranged for conference attendees.

He looked up and smiled as I came in saying, “What can do for you?”  

I asked him and he replied, “You came in at the perfect time. I was just making sure we had enough jackets and one of our people just dropped by to tell me he was switching to another tour.”

“The task of leadership is not to put greatness into humanity, but to elicit it, for the greatness is already there.” ~ John Buchanan

Only later that night at the opening mixer when I saw Joe walk in, listening to two people animatedly talking to him did I realize he was the same man I’d shaken hands in the receiving line outside the hotel when I arrived. He was the CEO of Darden Restaurants, the company hosting the conference for its top performing managers at Olive Garden and Red Lobster.

Here’s what happened. 

Rather than an estimated 30 minute taxi ride from the airport, through town and up the hill to the hotel, three of us had a muggy, noisy and fascinating two hour trip through one of the biggest local festivals of the year.  As I and the other attendees straggled in all day from the airport, in a remarkable show of respect the top management and all board members stood out in the heat, waiting for us.  They lined up to personally greet us. The last person I met in line was humble Joe Lee who had started working at Darden as a 19 year old.

“You cannot be a leader, and ask other people to follow you, unless you know how to follow, too.” ~ Sam Rayburn

Sadly it is not a common scene for me to see at the conferences at which I speak: the CEO personally going out of his way to see that his people are taken care of.

That’s probably why I observed something else that should be more common at such conferences.  During breaks attendees were surrounding Joe, eager to talk.  He actively listened rather than talking at them.  And the board members and officers were not standing off by themselves. Rather they sat at different tables and walked around to talk with various individuals throughout the day.

“You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.” ~ Ken Kesey

That’s why I beamed when I opened the New York Times this Sunday and saw one of those Darden officers staring back at me, Clarence Otis Jr., then CFO, mentored by Joe and now the company’s CEO.

In this newspaper interview Clarence described how Joe’s inclusive leadership style has influenced his.

“You can judge a leader by the size of the problem he tackles. Others cope with the waves, it’s his job to watch the tide.” ~Antony Jay

Reflecting a Me2We leadership mindset, here’s some nuggets from Clarence’s interview:

• First Care or Your Team

“On Sept. 11, 2001, after it became clear what had happened, we had an all-employee meeting, and Joe started to talk. One of the first things he said was, ‘we are trying to understand where all our people are who are traveling.’

The second thing he said was: ‘We’ve got a lot of Muslim teammates, managers in our restaurants, employees in our restaurants, who are going to be under a lot of stress during this period. And so, we need to make sure we’re attentive to that.’

And that was pretty powerful. Of all the things you could focus on that morning, he thought about the people who were on the road and then our Muslim colleagues.”

• You’ll Do Well if the Teams You Create Do

When asked how his leadership style has changed over time, he responded, “It’s less and less about getting the work done and more and more about building the team — getting the right people in place who have the talent and capability to get the work done and letting them do it.

• Associate With People Who Perform Well in Unclear Situations

Being comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty is a trait I look for… they’ve got their wits about them, so they’re looking as much for the opportunity that’s inherent in that as they are for the risk.

“Leadership is the ability to establish standards and manage a creative climate where people are self-motivated toward the mastery of long term constructive goals, in a participatory environment of mutual respect, compatible with personal values.” ~ Mike Vance

In a weak economy organizations must optimize performance of everyone. Clarence’s approach reflects the most efficient way to accomplish that – evoking the ensemble style he learned from acting where everyone knows they are a valued part of a team. 

They get in sync with each other.

They look to each other’s needs just as Joe did by counting rain jackets for his people. 

Accomplishing greater things 

T O G E T H E R

Kare Anderson

415.331.6336 ~ Kare@SayitBetter.com

Talk on Twitter? @kareanderson

http://www.sayitbetter.com/speak

http://www.movingfrommetowe.com

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Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Communicate to Connect

Craft an Attention-Grabbing Message

I am gratified by the 249 comments to this post I wrote for Harvard Business Review and seek your specific tips on quotability, the first step to connecting in this increasingly complex, information-flooded, and connected world:

You can feel the tension in the compressed smiles, quick nods and pointed questions at the annual Morgan Stanley Global Healthcare conference. Schedules are packed as the high-stakes finance crowd gathers to hear 20-minute rapid-fire talks by CEOs of start-ups and public companies who seek funding or favorable stock analysts’ reports.

Presenters speak fast, using complex medical and financial terms.

In contrast, my client, the CEO of a new biotech company walks on stage, rolls up his shirt sleeve, and stops at the center of the stage. As he turns to the audience, he pauses briefly to smile. He raises his bare forearm, pointing at a patch. “When patients put on our medical patch they will feel the pain-relieving effects faster than the latest Porsche can go from zero to 90.”

By linking the speed of the medication’s effect to a Porsche’s acceleration, he evoked the “Compared to what?” conversational cue. We are wired to draw connections between things, even where there aren’t any.

This makes the world seem more understandable, familiar, even safe.

If your “Compared to what?” connection grabs people’s attention, you have set the context in which people will view it and decide upon it, just as a general chooses terrain favorable to winning a battle.

Here are some examples of different ways to craft such a message:

Use a familiar slogan in a fresh way: After a company has spent millions to make a slogan familiar, skew it in a new direction for your intended meaning. Piggybacking on the famous “Got milk?” slogan, the Redwood Hospital in Northern California launched a billboard campaign to seek blood donations with this appeal: “Got blood?”

My friend, Paul Geffner, once owned a chicken take-out joint in San Francisco called Poultry in Motion.

Startle with specifics: “Ten times as much funding is devoted to research on the prevention of male baldness as malaria, a disease that kills more than 1 million people each year,” said Bill Gates on the need for creative capitalism to serve more people.

And venture capitalist John Doerr, who has invested in green technology, likes to say, “We can bail out the economy — we cannot bail out the environment.”

In a TV commercial for outdoor gear maker REI, we see the backs of two women who are sitting atop a peak, taking in the scenery at night, when the announcer intones, “October 28th. Jenny Kruger finds out that even the finest four-star restaurant is no match for one with 4 million stars.”

Add a dash of dry humor: A Cuban, after apologizing because he could not offer his guests anything to eat, explained the consequences of Castro’s Revolution: “The three successes were education, healthcare and sports. Three failures were breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

Now, more than ever, your capacity to create indelible messages is vital. More than money, smarts, social standing, or attractiveness, in this increasingly complex yet connected world, being most frequently quoted can keep you or your brand top-of-mind.

Whoever most vividly characterizes a situation determines how others see it, talk about it, and act on it.

When asked how he managed to write such gripping horror novels, Stephen King once responded, “I cut out the boring stuff,” and so can you. As a journalist, I slogged through more interviews than I care to recall, in which smart newsmakers would often drown in their own generalizations and jargon, despite being desperate to make a point across.

Don’t make that mistake.

The stories that grab us are those with the most vividly apt illustrations.

Interestingness, like a cork, always bobs up to the top of our attention. 

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/12/craft_an_attention-grabbing_me.html

Bring Kare to speak about quotability and connective communication cues to bring out the best side in others and become higher performing and happier -- with others:

http://www.sayitbetter.com/speak/

Accomplishing greater things 

T O G E T H E R

Kare Anderson

Say it Better Center, LLC

415.331.6336 ~ Kare@SayitBetter.com

Talk on Twitter? @kareanderson

http://www.sayitbetter.com/speak

http://www.movingfrommetowe.com

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Communicate to Connect