The North Korean Army Can Teach You How to Manifest Your Dreams

As Americans, we seem more concerned about the saber-rattling of the North Korean Army than the citizens of South Korea, only 90 miles away. Reports come in saying that business is as usual in the city of Seoul and the consensus from  the many interviews with regular people on the street state that they are going about life like normal.

One American reporter asked, “How can you be so calm and nonchalant with the possibilities of war happening right on your doorstep?” To which one young person being interviewed responded, “Sure we are concerned and we are prepared, but to give any more attention to that fact will give the North Koreans and it’s leader, Kim Jong-un  what they want, attention, and then they would have won.”

So what this young South Korean person being interviewed said is that she is committed to being prepared, but not attached to the constant war threatening rhetoric.” Just like when we manifest our dreams, being prepared to receive those dreams is as important as asking for them. By being committed to what you want, the possibilities go way up that you will receive them.

It’s much like the understanding that within a typical American breakfast of eggs and bacon, the chicken is attached to the process while the pig is totally committed! By committing to our dreams as if it has already happened, we are manifesting what ever we want faster and more efficiently into our lives. By being attached to a dream means that you may think about it, and in some cases, it may be the only thing that you think about all the time, but you don’t believe that you have it.

Kevin Trudeau , on one of his radio programs, explains it best with a simple but powerful mind exercise. He would instruct you to think of a money goal, let’s say $100,000. Now think about the $100,000, write down on a piece of paper, think about what you could do with that kind of money and how it would impact your life. How do you feel? Did you think you were any closer to manifesting that $100,000?

Now what he would have you do is imagine that $100,000 again, but this time, imagine that the check has already been written, deposited in your bank account. but you won’t be able to access the money for another 4 months. But it’s there. It’s just not yet fully accessible to be withdrawn.

Now between the two examples, how did you experience one over the other? Which one felt more real? Which one felt like the $100,00 was within reach?

If you’re like most, the second example felt more real. The feeling of anticipation. The feeling that it’s happened and that just we need to be patient and continue going forward with our day-to-day actions that will bring us our dream of having $100,000. The second example creates the feeling of being committed while the first example is the feeling of being attached. It’s the “committed” example that vibrates the energy like a beacon attracting our dreams to us. That energy is created through our feelings and emotions, which communicates to the universe, God, your higher power,  that we are ready to receive.

So by believing that it is so, your dreams become your reality. Have fun, get excited and think about what dreams do you what to manifest for your life!

Virtual vs. Face to Face; What’s More Effective?

Fun Cooking Team Building

With the advent of virtual meetings via Skype, Cisco conferencing, etc…, some meeting planners proclaimed the day of Face to Face (F2F) meetings has gone the way of the Dodo bird! In other words extinct!  And for a while, lots of evidence was out their supporting that theory. But like most things that have to do with any change, especially when it’s connected to new technology, there has been a swing back to what has been traditionally most effective for business communication, face to face meetings.

Relationship building has been the #1 outcome requested from our team building clients lately. These team building experiences have become the glue that emotionally bond work teams together and help them create a solid foundation of relationship and trust. Most of the organizations that work with us say the same thing, our people work virtually on almost all projects and they need face to face time to re-establish a connection with each other. And because that face to face time is limited by busy schedules, they are always looking for more organized and effective team experiences that go way beyond the old time cocktail mingling or brief meal conversation “catch-up”.

Below is a great article that I found in SpeakerNet News by a colleague, Ian Percy who also speaks on team building in the workplace. Here are some of his thoughts on the subject of virtual meetings vs. Face to Face meetings:

Creativity research finds F2F trumps virtual meetings — Ian Percy

The idea of working virtually and not having to actually meet people is quite popular, if controversial, these days prompted by Yahoo’s banning of virtual work. MeetingsNet had an interesting article suggesting that F2F generates significantly more creativity than virtual connections. Maybe Yahoo’s Marissa Meyer is right since the company’s future depends on innovation. In the experiment people were given various creative tasks but some worked together over the phone, some by video and some face-to-face. The two virtual groups were the same when it came to the number of creative ideas generated. However the F2F pairings had 30% more ideas. When it came to the quality of the creativity the F2F groups again scored better but just below a level of significance.

Here’s what’s interesting—all participants reported about the same level of “feeling” and “enthusiasm.” In other words the researchers don’t know why F2F works better. That would make for an interesting discussion—a F2F one, of course. Personally I think it’s due to the influence of subtle energy that most people have yet to accommodate in their thinking. All of the trials happened in the same physical location which means the energy was pervasive and co-mingled. I predict much greater differences if the virtual trial partners were actually spread out across the country instead of in the next room. The lesson is to not be so quick to go the virtual route, especially if the outcome is mission-critical.

Active Listening, Does This Work For You?

I’m just as guilty as the next person in my communication. I walk around totally in my head and when someone asks me a question like, “How are you?”, well I’m off to the races! Next thing I notice is that poor person who was kind enough to ask me how I was, was now a victim of my regurgitation of the mouth.

So I came up with an exercise challenge for myself and for our communication/leadership workshop attendees. Focus on what we call “active listening” for one day and see what you learn from it. Now if one day seems too long for some of you, chunk it down to a time that works for you. A couple of hours, fifteen minutes, just start where ever you feel comfortable and track what happens during your “active listening” exercise.

So this is how it works:

Commit to talking almost always in questions. Like, “What do you think…”
Restrain yourself in over-talking and while the other person is speaking, respond with words like, “I see”, “That makes sense”, “Yes”, or “Go on”. Some people suggest repeating back phrases of what you’ve just heard like “repeating back phrases, I see”.
Focus your eyes on their face, eyes and/or mouth. Don’t let yourself be easily distracted from what’s going on around you, give them the gift of you being present.
Always thank them for sharing and mean it!

Prepare and expect something wonderful to happen. I don’t know what it will be, but something always happens when it becomes about them and not about you.

After practicing active listening on a few people, let us know what did you experience?

How Do You Communicate?

In my latest book, “Teamwork: Recipe to Your Business Success”,  I reference NLP (neuro-linquistic programming) as it shares communication tendencies that vary between people. They talk about the acronym VAK as the different tendency breakdowns that mean:
V for Visual,
A is for Auditory and
K is for Kinesthetic.

The idea is that if we understand how a person tends to communicate, we can best predict their behavior and give us critical information that heightens our awareness of what this person is trying to say.

Now with saying all of that, I have observed that we all have these VAK tendencies within us all but in varying degrees. It’s when we’re stressed or pressured is when we tend to focus on our “go to” tendency.

For instance, my wife,  whose tendency is what we call “high visual”, when her communication center’s focus is almost all visual, and when an emergency hits (aka “stressed situation”), she goes into what we call “visual deafness”. I’m sure you know someone in your life like that, the more you raise your voice, the more they can’t hear what you’re saying. In fact, the more you increase your volume, the more the stress levels go up and, well, you got it, it’s even harder to help this person.

So what’s the solution? Well for a visual or high visual tendency person, go visual! With my wife, I’ll use signage, waving hands, bright red stop sign, anything that gets her attention. Then once I have her attention, I’ll calm her down enough to be able to speak with her in a calm and relaxed manner.

This solution is not perfect, especially if you don’t have a sign handy, but at least I understand why she isn’t responding to my voice and don’t take offense which usually means my voice would get louder and racketing up both of our stress levels. So knowing is half the battle to alleviate any hurt feelings later on.

What’s do you think your personal communication tendency is and how does that impact you with the people closest to 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?!)

Cooked Foods Are Why Humans Are Smart

The human brain is a calorie hog – it has to be to do all the work it needs to do.

Around 200,000 years ago we figured out the joy of cooking, and our creativity and intelligence took a great leap forward. It seems by using the process of cooking to break down our food before it ever enters our digestive system, we provide more energy faster and more efficiently to our brain. This frees it up to do what it was designed to do – to think and create!

The moral of this story: Never feel guilty about indulging in your culinary passions ever again!

Read the entire article here:

http://www.livescience.com/culture/080811-brain-evolution.html

Social Intelligence And The Biology Of Leadership

I have always been fascinated by the function of the brain, so when I came across this article in the Harvard Business Review, I just had to share it with all of you.

The information and research presented is especially useful to any of you who doubt the power of the “gut” in decision making, or the role of positive mood and play in superior job performance.

The bad news:
Social intelligence is a critical leadership skill, and you won’t succeed without it.

The good news:
Social intelligence can be improved (if you’re committed to improving it.)

The authors have devised a 360 degree tool for measuring social intelligence and to help in creating a plan for changing it (the Emotional and Social Competency Inventory)

Here are the seven social qualities they test for:

• Empathy
  Do you understand what motivates other people, even those from different backgrounds?
  Are you sensitive to others’ needs?
• Attunement
  Do you listen attentively and think about how others feel?
  Are you attuned to others’ moods?
• Organizational Awareness
  Do you appreciate the culture and values of the group or organization?
  Do you understand social networks and know their unspoken norms?
• Influence
  Do you persuade others by engaging them in discussion and appealing to their self-interests?
  Do you get support from key people?
• Developing Others
  Do you coach and mentor others with compassion and personally invest time and energy in mentoring?
  Do you provide feedback that people find helpful for their professional development?
• Inspiration
  Do you articulate a compelling vision, build group pride, and foster a positive emotional tone?
  Do you lead by bringing out the best in people?
• Teamwork
  Do you solicit input from everyone on the team?
  Do you support all team members and encourage cooperation?

Investing the time and money in developing so called “soft-skills” is critical to the successful performance of the hard bottom line. Ignore at your team’s peril!

A Culinary Team Building Group Game

I just used this activity for a group of principals, administrators and staff of a PA school district during an all-day CEO Chef team building workshop that also included our Corporate Culinary Challenge. This activity, called “Tower of Babel” really calls for extensive pre-planning and problem solving (a good warm-up for the Corporate Culinary Challenge!)

Groups that do the best with Tower of Babel usually spend most of their time planning, testing their materials, and building prototypes.

I thought you might want to try this with your own team – and, it still has something of a culinary air about it, as well!!

Tower of Babel

Time required: 30 minutes minimum

Resources:

• 1 round table per team
• 1 lb spaghetti or linguini (dry) per team
• 1 bag mini-marshmellows per team
• 1 chair per participant
• 1 rope or cord, 5 feet in length (I’ve never needed longer – usually 3 feet is enough)

Process:

Divide larger group up into teams of 6-8. Assign each team a table. Hand out the rules, building materials and start the clock! When time is called, you may be able to eye-ball the winner. If not, use the cord and mark off the height from base to top of tower on the cord. Keep this distance and readjust only if a subsequent tower is taller (make note that this new tower is now the tallest)

Options:

• Allow a mandatory time for planning before building is permitted
• Make exercise competitive (as if they won’t do that naturally!)
• Assign one observer per team whose job it is to watch the team for problem solving and planning behaviors

Tower of Babel Rules
(to be handed out to each team)

Outcome

To build the tallest, free-standing tower you are able to from the materials provided and within time limit.

Conditions

• You will be given a limited amount of time by the facilitator to plan and construct your tower.
• The tower cannot be supported by any device other than with the building resources provided. (This means you cannot hold up the tower by hand! )
• The height of the tower will be determined at the time of judging.
• The height will be judged as a vertical measurement taken from the base of the tower to the highest point of the structure.
• Only building resources provided to your team by the facilitator can be used in construction of the tower.
• Additional conditions may be added by the facilitator at any time.

Tower of Babel Debrief Questions
(to be handed out to each observer if used, or each team at the end of the activity. Add more questions as you need.)

Questions for Observers:

• How did the team allocate its time between planning and doing?
• How did the team work to accomplish its task- e.g., did one person assume a leadership role; was the task divided into sub-tasks; did the team work independently or as a whole?
• How effective was communication within the group?
• What role did each team member play in the group.
• Did every team member have a chance to contribute?
• Did every team member feel they had a chance to contribute?

You need conflict to succeed.

Today’s Smart Brief on Leadership has a pointer to an article on leadership in the Hindu News. Here’s a quote that got me thinking:

“There will be highs and lows, but if the leader begins to see prolonged periods when people are unhappy, then there is a need to take steps to deal with the problem, he guides. “Heated debate, reasoned argument and other such forms of conflict – when focused on issues, not personalities – should be encouraged not stifled.”

Too many times in our CEO Chef cooking team buildings have I seen teams start down a path to complete their culinary challenge without seeking the opinion of the entire group. This is perhaps because individuals acquiesced to an authoritative or higher-ranked team member rather than state their own ideas about an alternative approach. Usually, these teams end up with the least attractive buffet item result.

How often do people choose to flee, rather than embrace, conflict?

We’re always taught to seek resolution – be nice, not rock the boat. But, how can we get the best solutions to today’s pressing and urgent problems without some “creative conflict”? If a group comes to consensus too soon, it may sacrifice alternative solutions that can only be uncovered during a time of disagreement.

Here’s how to use conflict and disagreement to your team’s advantage:

1. Honor everyone’s opinion – if you respect other’s point of view, they will respect yours.
2. Listen – this means totally focusing on what the other person is saying with a clear mind. If you’re not thinking of your own reply, you are open to truly hearing another and establishing mutual understanding.
3. Be open – even if you think an idea stinks, think, “What new ideas does this current idea generate?”
4. Don’t take it personally – People express their passion in different ways. My New York background comes across very loud and aggressive when I’m charged about a topic. It’s not personal – it’s just who I am.
5. Seek consensus after all avenues have been explored – wait until everyone is heard and all issues have been aired before you move towards an agreed course of action.

Viva la difference!

Perspective Pasta

My neighbor invited us over to watch the Lakers-Boston basketball finals and I asked if I could bring something over to feed everyone. Of course I got the nod to bring a main dish to the party, and they added that it’s okay to try out something different on them.

Given the green light to try something new, I realized I had a hankering for lots of garlic. I then eyed a can of Burgundy snails (escargot for you Francophiles) in the pantry and a package of vermicelli pasta. Now the taste was rounding itself out quite nice but I needed to add some substance to the dish and remembered some great spicy Italian sausage that I just got at the meat market.

Well, if you’d ever had baked snails in garlic butter, this was what I was going after for flavor, add the pasta as filler and sliced, spicy Italian sausage and you got a winner.

I got so involved with my pasta dish that I didn’t realize the game had already begun. So we hurried over next door with my big bowl of pasta, neatly wrapped in plastic (great idea to keep it warm as well as in the bowl). Dropped off the pasta on the kitchen counter and joined my comrades on the sofa to cheer on our favorite team (I’ll let you guess which one).

Soon, someone started to dish up the pasta and pass the plates around to all the gang. We were so wrapped up in the game, we didn’t really talk much about the garlicky bowl of noodles that I brought over with me.

Fast forward to the conclusion of the night, everyone had a great time, they all appreciated the special dish that I brought over and then they started to ask, “what kind of mushrooms were in the pasta, they were delicious?”

I didn’t understand right away what they meant until I got it, they thought the snails were “mushrooms”!

Well I explained what they really were and I apologized to the group for not communicating that important fact before we ate.

Of course I was forgiven by the gang, but I couldn’t help thinking how similar this situation is in the work place. My miscommunication was based on perspective. From my perspective I thought it was totally normal to put snails in a pasta dish with lots of garlic. From my friends perspective, mushrooms made more sense to go in this pasta dish. So they saw and tasted what they wanted to see and taste. Even though if you look and taste mushrooms and snails side by side, you could see the differences, taste the differences. But through our filters called perspective they were one in the same!

So it was a great reminder to me how important perspective is to effective communication. In our workshops, this is about the time I mention to the class, if you want to clean up your “perspective filters”, ask clarifying questions. And keep asking until you have a sense of what the other person’s perspective looks like (and tastes like!)

So I guess the qualifying question I’ll get next time I’m invited to bring over an unrecognizable ingredient is, “Is that snails in this dish?”

Italian Sausage and Escargot in Garlic Vermicelli

Serves 4-6

1 lb vermicelli pasta

8 quarts salted water, boiling

12 cloves of garlic, chopped fine

1 small can of Burgandy snails (available in fine grocery stores or on-line)

½ cup of olive oil

to taste Kosher salt

1 teaspoon of fresh cracked black pepper

3 tablespoons butter, unsalted

4 Italian sausages, cooked and sliced

½ cup of white wine

1 cup of Kangen water (more on that later) or chicken stock

4 tablespoons of butter, unsalted

2 tablespoons of chopped parsley

3 tablespoons of finely chopped green onions, cut on the bias

Drop you vermicelli into the pot of salted boiling water. Make sure your pot is big enough to hold the vermicelli and water no more then ¾ way up the pot. Cook until just al dente.

Meanwhile, drain, rinse and dry your can of escargot snails. Give the escargot snails time to marinate in the chopped garlic, olive oil and salt and pepper to taste. Five minutes to marinate is okay, ten is better.

Heat your largest saute pan to medium heat and add the marinaded snails with garlic and oil to it. Cook gently for 4 minutes then add the sliced, cooked sausages to the pan. Cook another minute and add your white wine and Kangen water (or chicken stock). Simmer until the moister reduces by half it’s volume in the pan. Add the final 4 tablespoons of butter and swirl the pan, incorporating and emulsifying the snail mixture. Add the chopped parsley and salt and pepper to taste. Toss in the cooked pasta, slide into a serving bowl and sprinkle with chopped green onion. Serve with or without grated Parmesan cheese.

Remind your guests what they are eating!

Happy eating!