Speaking – Tip 1

Speaking – Tip 1

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Your audience will reflect your energy

If you’ve watched the X Factor or any show where the contestants are expected to entertain the audience and be judged on it, you may be familiar with the uncomfortable feeling an obviously nervous contestant causes.  The contestant is uncomfortable and so are you.  Similarly you might be familiar with the opposite feeling where you are drawn in to the entertainment and the sofa commentary halts for just few minutes.

It’s different from liking or not liking a performance – a great singer can sing a song you don’t like – it doesn’t make you feel uncomfortable (well, unless the song itself has it’s own history for you), you just don’t like the song.

Whether this reflection is due to our mirror neurons as discovered by Vittorio Gallese et al, or something entirely different, it is a phenomenon a speaker should appreciate and use.

Simply, when you’re speaking the audience will tend to reflect your energy.  Bring the pace and energy down for something that needs consideration or sympathy, take it up when you want engagement or motivation.

Of course you can read the audience energy too – are they engaged, on the edge of their seat when they should be, and sat back looking thoughtful when you’d like them to be?  If not, are they reflecting you?

It’s not the only consideration, but it is speaking tip number one.  I first heard this tip from Nicholas Bate during one of his Instant MBA workshops – it was one of those ‘of course’ moments for me… thank you Nicholas.

Be remarkable,
Mark

Is Positive Emotion relevant to Business?

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We all like to feel good, don’t we?  I recall many years ago the BBC Radio breakfast DJ Chris Evans said something like ‘in order to appreciate feeling good you have to feel bad’, or some variation on that duality. But, does feeling good have any benefits in the workplace beyond, well, feeling good?

One of the worlds leading researchers in positive emotions is Barbara Frederickson.  With her colleagues Dr. Frederickson formed the Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions which you’ll find summarized at her PEPLab site, and in her book Positivity. Positivity-Book-Barbara-Frederickson

Among the things we can learn from the research is the effect positive and negative emotion have on our ability to creatively engage in a task or activity.  From my own experience, approaching a problem in a good mood certainly helps with engagement, leading to a frame of mind open to opportunities and possibilities.  When I compare it to approaching a task or problem in a negative mood, I’m much more likely to create a ‘why this is doomed’ approach, or at least find it harder to engage.

Although rarely black and white, it does seem like common sense that approaching an activity with positivity increases your chances of a great outcome.  What isn’t common sense and why I think Frederickson’s research is so interesting, is that it’s unusual for us to take advantage of this, that is, to actively try and engage positive emotion at work.

The quick version of the broaden and build theory is that positive emotions make us more open, they broaden our mind so we are better able to make connections and discover new information.  It’s perfect for problem solving, enabling a more creative state of mind.  This in turn means you’re more likely to learn new things and have a wider range of approaches and experience, which buildsyour resources over time.  So, not only are we more successful in the moment, but over time we grow our talent as well.

This is very relevant for business.  If individuals whether solo or part of team are more engaged, it can positively impact the business.  So, how do you help foster positive emotion in the workplace?  There are lots of ways, here’s a few:

  • Consistency between your internal and external view and approach to customers
  • Opportunity to work in and on your strengths
  • Having a better appreciation for the different kinds of personality among your team (putting some effort into understanding your colleagues)
  • Positive leadership and role models
  • A moral purpose
  • Fairness & openness
  • An unbalanced approach to criticism

Just taking this last example ‘an unbalance approach to criticism’ – Frederickson put a number on the amount of positive to negative emotion shown in successful and unsuccessful business teams.  The magic number is a ratio of 3:1… 3 times more positive emotion than negative.

A practical example, and a setting used in the research, is the interaction between people in the same meeting.  For example, if an idea is raised, a positive interaction might entail people asking about and exploring the idea – ‘that sounds interesting, though I’m not sure I understand, tell us more’, whereas ‘no, that doesn’t sound like it will work’ is a negative one.  Of course, some ideas raised may well be untenable and exploring them a waste of time.  The point is that successful, high performance business teams showed a positivity to negativity ratio above 3:1, and unsuccessful business teams showed a ratio of less than 1:1.

Incidentally, there’s also also a threshold for being too positive, it’s 11:1.  Here there’s so much positivity as to be blind to the challenges or pitfalls of an approach, and the downsides aren’t considered.  Which makes it worth pointing out that some negativity is beneficial and realistic, specifically as we’ve just learned, a positive to negative ratio between 3:1 and 11:1.

So there we have it, well a bit of it anyway… positive emotion can make you and your organisation more successful.

Be remarkable,
Mark

Being Remarkable – 1

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I bet you could easily name one or more people whom you would describe as ‘remarkable’.  Those people stand-out.  And what’s more, if we were all in a room the names we produced would have plenty of overlap –  Mahatma Ghandi is an easy one, and Mother Theresa is pretty likely too.

Some small percentage of remarkable people become famous for what they achieve, and so many of us can name them – and in the cases of Ghandi and Mother Theresa there would be little debate about the description.  If you search the web for ‘remarkable people’, celebrity will be mentioned pretty close to the top of the resulting articles, and in some of these cases the debate would stronger!

But being remarkable doesn’t require fame.  The teacher that manages to genuinely inspire her pupils to greatness, surely is a candidate.  As would be the soldier who is awarded the Victoria Cross and the list of Nobel laureates.

My ‘elevator pitch’ version of what I think it takes to become remarkable is – Positive, Passion and Purpose.

  • Positive – what remarkable people do, is for good.  Whether on a small or a grand scale, against insurmountable odds or simply unique – but certainly, for good.
  • Passion – being remarkable takes effort and time, the kind of effort and time that few people are willing to commit… and passion is an amazing driver to put in that effort and time.
  • Purpose –  I was tempted to include another ‘P’ for ‘people’ but decided that purpose and people are intertwined.  We are fundamentally social animals and to be recognised as remarkable by other people, usually requires an underlying purpose that benefits others.  And like passion, purpose and meaning beyond ourselves drives effort over the long-haul.

The rest of this series will go beyond the elevator pitch and I hope it goes some way to inspire the remarkable in you…

Be remarkable,
Mark

How do you measure positive character?

Back at the formal start of Positive Psychology in 1998 one of the many challenges was the lack of an agreed way to characterize and measure good character… on the assumption that good character is one of the elements of positive human development.  A project created in 2000 by the Mayerson Foundation called the Values in Action Institute, now known simply VIA Character, was the start of the VIA Classification of Character Strengths.

The classification came about through a broad study to identify cross cultural, morally valued virtues and strengths of character. Led by Professors Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman, it includes 24 character strengths such as teamwork, kindness, creativity and authenticity.

Today, I love using VIA Character as one of the tools to help people understand their strengths… I say love using it because being able to spend time with somebody talking about their strengths and how that translates into what they are great at, has been a universally positive experience on both side.  And with the recent release of the VIA Character Team Report, using VIA Character with teams has become even easier.

Practically, being clear about our strengths can make working on and choosing projects or work assignments easier;  and if you’re able to adjust or tweak your work so you can emphasise your strengths, it can make an enormous difference to both effectiveness and enjoyment.

In a team, sharing character strengths can help to grow the bond between the individuals and foster and improve the chances of successful collaboration – and so the results of the team.  It can also help highlight gaps that can be consciously compensated for or at least considered.

VIA have recently published a video study with Allied Health in Wisconsin, USA which shows how they’ve used VIA Character… it’s worth a view.

Allied Health Organisation and The VIA Survey

 

If you have any problems viewing the video in the page, you can watch it here)

 

Be remarkable,
-Mark

Reach Remarkable

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Oh no, the first post!  I think the best strategy is to just get on with it, so deep breath, here goes…

Reach Remarkable has been a long time coming. To be launching a new business and, clichéd as it might be, following a dream, feels quite remarkable.  From what I can make of the Office for National Statistics information about ‘business births’ as they describe it, about 250,000 new business are created in the UK each year.  So in the grand scheme of things, one more doesn’t move the needle very much.

But, I can’t think of it on the grand scale.  This is a new business and career for me and so affects my little world quite a lot.  It’s aim is both simple and grand:

Help us (people) to be remarkable!

Easy to say, a little harder to achieve.  Not in any way because of our individual capacity to be remarkable; and entirely because finding the right approach and support to achieve that as a speaker, trainer and coach will be a driving challenge.

We are not all destined to be Ghandi, but then one of the keys to being remarkable is that we must do it in a way that works for us, is authentic for us – and understanding what is authentically ‘me’ is a good place to start… and for this starting post, a good place to end.

Be remarkable,
-Mark