Top 3 Ways to Employee Change

Change is always a touchy subject with most everyone, especially in the workplace. The three top methods to change are the following:

1. Impact Change
2. Discovery
3. Spaced Repetition

 Impact changes are unforgettable. It’s a time in your  life when something shocked your system, like being fired, a sudden death, a surprise party, winning the lottery, anything of that nature. Lessons learned from an “impact change” can be deep and lasting, but from a training perspective, impact change is hard to plan so therefore, difficult to use in the training arena.

Discovery or “Ah-ha moments” are also challenging to plan, but are very effective in the long-term retention. It’s like the commercial for a famous tomato juice beverage, “I could’da had a V-8!” (smack your hand on your forehead simultaneously for the full effect!)

Than the last method to change, spaced repetition. Also very effective as the other two methods but has the advantage of being plan-able. It’s the way most of us learned our  multiplication times tables (oh, the countless hours writing times tables for Sister Madeleine, punishment for speaking in public. Now I get paid for doing the very same thing )

Which one of these three methods have you experienced in your own life and how effective or how has it served you?

Fun – The Secret Team Ingredient!

Smile'n Salad

Summer time still evokes feelings of fun, exploration and more fun. Even to this day, the closer we get to June, the more I want to hear the final school bell to sound and the beginning of summer vacation (aka fun time!) to begin.

This is the secret ingredient we use when we create our cooking team building for you, a fun experience that anchors you back to the time that brought your team together. Fun rips down the emotional walls that we put up; fun transports us to a whole other place; fun transforms our emotions in a heart beat, allowing us to forget what was just “stick’n in our craw!”

Fun is sometimes associate with being a kid. Well if being a kid helps me in being more relaxed, more productive and more successful in my endeavors, then slip on my Red Ball Jets (whoops, I think I just aged myself  ), dust off my Spider bike’s banana seat and let’s have some kid fun!

What’cha going to do for your kid fun?

Carmageddon!

It figures that Los Angeles,  the entertainment capital of the world, would name a major freeway project closure like the next summer movie thriller! “Carmageddon” is the latest name that’s being used to describe the 10 mile closure of Interstate 405 from I-10 to Highway 101 for this upcoming weekend of July 16th & 17th. What’s interesting is not just the unique names that are coming out of this major highway event, but how its brought the city of Los Angeles together!

That’s right, an inconvenience at best, a major cluster duck most likely has everyone talking, everyone focused and everyone coming together. I’ve heard this phenomenon before, when my son Chris was in NY during a major blackout, how people who would normally ignore each other would instead care about their neighbors. Well in a similar way, L.A. is coming together even more so than a championship win by the Lakers. They’re coming together through something that really impacts their lives, the lifeblood of Southern California, its highway system.

Because we are in the business of building relationships and maximizing your team’s potential in your business by using an experience that is common to all, eating and cooking together. It’s amazing to see the same effect large-scale that touches millions. It gives me hope that if creating a meal together, or experiencing a highway inconvenience city-wide bonds people together; then there is hope to find lasting peace in the world through our commonalities than through our differences.

So Carmageddon, as a city, we’re ready for you!

PS - In case you really need to be in another part of the city fast, I heard today that someone is offering helicopter rides for only $150 a pop!

 

The Power of Words

Many times when we are working with a group, during our conversation on effective communication, we talk about the power of words and their meaning to us as individuals. We would ask the questions, “When I say the word dog, what comes to your mind?”

The answers open you eyes to how varied people’s meanings are to a simple word such as “dog”. They have said, “cat” or “poodle” or “Lassie” or even “food” (it’s not what you’re thinking )

The point is that with the variety of answers such as that, it’s a miracle that we can string a thought together and have other people actually comprehend what we are meaning!

The point of this following video illustrates how changing the words to communicate the same thing, but in a more effective and eloquent way reaps you more rewards.

Enjoy!

The Sounds of Synergy

I came upon this video and  was mesmerized by the playing of the two cellists. I’m always looking for metaphors and examples in life to explain the concept of “synergy”. The most basic is the synergistic equation that 1+1=3 or the phrase, the whole of our team is greater than the sum of its parts.

Even though the video is titled “Dueling Cellists”, it sounds like synergy to me!

Your Big Dance!

We’re right in the middle of what is called “March Madness”, “The Big Dance” or officially, the NCAA Basketball Tournament! Why this is important is not just how well our “brackets” are  doing (I’m afraid, not as well as I’d hoped  ) but rather, it’s one of the great celebrations of the potential of team!

Once the selection committee has put together the first round of play, everyone is speculating who will overcome lack of talent, lack of prestige and buck all the odds makers to become the “cinderella” team that surprises us all!

That contagious energy of hope, encouragement and connection is a wonderful thing. When it’s used in the business place great things can happen. We all want to hire that superstar that’s going to boost our business to the next level. But just like the Big Dance underdogs, winning is not relegated to just the superstars headed to the NBA draft. The winners are the teams that with the proper coach, are supremely focused on the task at hand and with the power of team, show the country what the realization of potential looks like. And at the end of the day, they have transformed themselves with that ultimate connection with each other that will reside within them forever!

What was your Big Dance? What team opportunities did you have that still reside in you right now?

I’ll admit, I can be a basketball nut at times and love the moments when teams lift themselves beyond the level that’s expected of them. But isn’t it those moments when we become inspired ourselves and do the unexpected that transcends what we or others thought was possible?

The Coach’s Coach, John Wooden

John Wooden, famous basketball coach of the 10 time NCAA champion UCLA Bruins, author, speaker, basketball Hall of Fame inductee as both a player and coach and overall great man, passed last Friday, June 4th, 2010.

I was not a former player of his or a personal friend either. In fact, I’ll even admit, I did not much like his teams growing up (sorry, I’m a Big East fan, more specifically, the Providence College Friars!). But even when I had to suffer through another missed NCAA championship to UCLA, I had to respect what they accomplished as a team. And the common link to those 10 NCAA National Championships was Coach Wooden.

Well the past 8 years, I’ve lived in the Los Angeles area and I’ve gotten to know and appreciate the local traditions and heros from the area. But no person is more uniformly admired than Coach John Wooden. He was more than a basketball coach to many young men. He was an educator first before he was just a basketball coach, and he became a mentor to many of them as well.

His quotes are famous, like, “Be quick, but don’t hurry” or “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” Or my favorite, “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.”

He has left behind a legacy and standard that we can all strive to attain. Thank you coach for your contributions. We are all better off because of you.

40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes

Just think of how many more things we can get done at a conference if the motivational speech was only 2 minutes long? (more time to build teams over food?!)

National Pancake Day!

I’m not usually one to follow obscure holidays named in honor of one thing or the next. But this day, National Pancake Day, you just can’t get away from it!

Without going out of my way, I’ve heard at least 5 references to this day, one on the radio, one on the web and the rest on television and oh, one reference talked about it yesterday!

Now usually a reference to obscure holidays are reserved at the end of an evening news telecast, during the “feel good” ending of the show. So after bombarding us with all the world and local negativity that we can stand for 27 1/2 minutes, the newscast writers figure that a cute story about it being, “Grandparents Day” (nothing against current grandparents ) is going to make all the icky news feeling just disappear!

But back to the pancake day stuff. What makes this obscure holiday seem to have a life of it’s own. Especially during a recovering (but still struggling) economy? What makes more than a few people reference this day of flat and fluffy, griddle cakes seem more important to talk about in the media?

My guess is once again, food, or in this case, the ultimate comfort food dominates our synaptic pathways. Especially during challenging times, we want to feel better about ourselves and about our life, something whose aroma smells of hope and possibilities. Well, this day’s solution is the humble but powerful pancake. Served in it’s many combinations, it’s ability to whisk us out of our typical day and connect us back to a time when we where young, when all we knew was hope and possibilities. Maybe that’s the reason more people today are mentioning the pancake. Why one sportscaster asked an up and coming football star, “What’s your favorite flavor of pancake?”

Or maybe, unconsciously everyone is burned out on their New Year’s resolution of eating “healthier” and they’re really only hungry and pancakes seem the perfect subconscious reference?

Either way, Happy Pancake Day to all and to all a good bite!

PS- I’m a whole grain and blueberry pancake man with 100% maple syrup!

“It’s Like Talking to the Wall!”

Friday’s emails always brings me one of my favorite newsletters call “Speakernet News”.  As you probably guessed, it’s a newsletter devoted to helping professional speakers in any way it can. 

In fact, most of the content (not counting the advertisements ) is from the readership so you know it’s been speaker specific tested.

Today, one such article was referring to “Busting the Mehrabian Myth” and if you’d like to enjoy the video that comes with it, go to:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dboA8cag1M

In essence, the Mehrabian theory refers to how we as humans take in new information. So as the theory goes, words represent only 7% of what we understand, the tonality and volume of how we say it represents 38% and the way we use our bodies and facial expressions make up the remainder of the 55% of what we understand and comprehend.

How this has been understood in the speaker/presentation community is “don’t worry about your content because they won’t hear it anyway!”

WRONG!

Can words make a mess of your message if you let it, sure thing! But you control the key to how the words are used, within what content they are used and how clearly they are presented.

As a leader (yes, you are all leaders who are reading this right now), your communication skills are always tested every time time a syllable leaves your mouth. What I’ve learned through countless training courses and years of presentation experience (yes, and some of the best learnings came from those “failed presentations”) is that the best way to teach, pass on information or just generally instruct an individual or group is to do the following:

1.  Be very clear in your head what needs to be heard.
2. Keep your message or instructions grouped in threes
3. Give clear examples, stories or metaphors that relate not to you, but to the listener.
4. Highlight important points and learnings with your tonality, volume and body language with once again remembering the circumstance and environment that you are talking in.

(Opps, I just broke my second rule!)

 

What other techniques or tricks do you use to help your listeners understand your conversation, point or presentation?