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?

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

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!

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?

I asked my first chef mentor, “What’s the secret to your success from all of these years cooking for others?”

I expected something from the cooking Holy Grail of information or something. I mean, after all, this guy has done it all. Cooked on a cruise ship, entertained royalty and dignitaries, so I figured that this secret has got to be real good!

So what was his answer, quite simply, “Flexibility!”

What! Flexibility, what does that have to do with entertaining and cooking?

Well this guy was a bit of an eccentric so I thought it’d think about it and get back to him.

Later that night, I got an order from the dining room that was a bit unusual. One of my very “soigné” (that’s kitchen talk for VIP) customers had come in with his young son who really wanted pizza. So knowing that we baked our own bread for dinner service, he asked the head waiter if that would be possible make a pizza. Of course the answer, as is now in our team building business, is always YES, then we figure it out later.

The young man only wanted a simple cheese pizza, nothing fancy, but a pizza none the less. Even though we baked bread and had a bread oven that the pizza could bake directly onto, we didn’t have a pizza peel (flat metal or wood platform with a handle to build the pizza directly onto and slide in and out of the oven). So I used instead a poster cardboard which worked quite well in a pinch.

Bottom line, our soigné customer was so impressed that he left the waiter and the kitchen a generous tip in appreciation for the extra effort and flexibility. Later, while I was sipping the beer that our kitchen tip bought, I thought back to my mentor’s secret to success, flexibility. I got it.

By the way, that wasn’t the end of the story, the very next day, that grateful customer booked his company’s holiday party, with a large deposit because of the extra consideration and flexibility that we showed.

It makes you think, what other success would an organization have if flexibility was adapted as a key value to follow?

PInch of Salt

I was sharing a 4^th of July summer salad recipe with a friend on Facebook and referred to a measurement as “a pinch” ,for one of the ingredients. Which brought up the question, “what exactly is a pinch”. Well I know what a pinch is to me, but I wanted to see what a pinch meant to other people. So I started asking that question to others.

“What’s a pinch?”

From such a seemingly easy question came a variety of answers. For some, it’s the amount a person can hold between their thumb, forefinger and middle finger, or for others, it’s the amount a person can quickly scoop with a thumb and forefinger or for one person, they mixed up the term pinch, and thought we meant a dash (we’ll leave that for another conversation ).

As confusing as this quest to discover what this measurement means, this illustrates what we do to each other all the time! We’re constantly sending out messages to each other and thinking that we “get” what you are saying to us! We’re a delusional society, running around shouting stuff that no one understands.!

Well maybe that’s a bit of exaggeration, but you see my point. We, well I mean I, assume I know what is being said, but I am always, always listening with my unique set of filters. And you will listen through your unique set of filters and the only way we can get a clearer view of what is really being communicated is through doing three simple things:

1. Being in a constant state of of awareness in both our speaking and especially in our listening. Get that we don’t get it!

2. Ask clarifying questions that allow you to get it (what exactly do you mean by a pinch?)

3. Listen from a place of “nothingness”. Leave the visor that we all wear, called filters, off and listen like it’s the first time we’ve ever heard this person speak. It’s magical what you’ll experience. It’s like pulling out a fresh sheet of blank white paper and allowing an artistic vision to transform that paper into a work of art.

So while we’re on the subject of a pinch, my meaning of this measurement is as follows, the amount that you can hold comfortably between your forefinger and thumb. Oh, and that’s not to be confused with a “smidgen” .

Can you think of times in your relationships, with people in you life, your sweetheart, your boss, your clients, that something was said that meant something else and how it affected that conversation?

Did you ever have one of those days when every task begins with “I got to…”!

Well I call that a “Igotta” day. Where it seems that everything on my list is completely different than what I’d rather be doing.

Well, I was having one of the days today. My business partner wants some simple accounting information, my wife wants me to clean the koi pond pump and the dogs want me to take them on a walk! What about me, what about what I want (proceed to whine right about now ). In fact, we usually call this, “the whine of the day”!

I was in “Igotta” overwhelm!

Then I started to think about what I’d rather do, what I consider FUN!

I drifted off thinking about the last team building group that I worked with and all the fun that we created while cooking our dinner together. Then it hit me like a ton of macaroni, we created the fun. I know this, this is what we do all the time, this is our job, transforming peoples states to one of a state of eating and cooking possibilities! We take people who are in overwhelm with their jobs or at their business conference and create an environment that promotes teamwork, builds relationships and above all, creates FUN!

I realized, this creation of fun is not just relegated to our culinary program, it is capable of being created anywhere. In fact, we regularly share that with our participants. Productivity begins with creating an attitude of fun. Think about the potential of that statement, the power of creating a state of being that transforms your productivity at work, at home, anywhere at anytime.

I started to think about our corporate clients, many of whom have been working on projects all day during a conference, now are rolling up their sleeves and cooking together with their co-workers to put together a multi-cultural gourmet buffet in a short amount of time with no recipes! All because of the environment that was created that emphasizes fun. There truly is power to FUN!

When has the “Igotta” attitude overwhelmed you and what did you do to transform it with fun?

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!

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!

I am continually amazed at the lessons I learn from being a CEO Chef trainer. Take last week for instance:

It’s a beautiful day and I arrive early because it’s better than being late. In this case, my arrival time worked in my favor. It didn’t take me very long to set up – 20 minutes – which meant I had an hour and a half to enjoy the day. I had already connected with the chef of the hotel where we were holding the program who was very meticulous and willing to do whatever it took to provide our group with the ingredients they’d need for their culinary team building program. He appeared to have everything under control, so I relaxed until the time the food was due to arrive (about 1 hour before “showtime”).

At T minus 45 minutes, I’m realizing the food still hadn’t made its appearance. No worries. My server, Miguel, was on the ball and went back to the kitchen to find out what what going on. He returned triumphant, escorting the rack of ingredients into the food preparation area. It looked a bit sparse, and, when I began to take inventory, I noticed Chef had inadvertently overlooked one full page of food items on the list I had given him.

How would you deal with this situation? Here’s how I handled it:

I reminded myself Chef had my best interests forefront of his mind. I also knew he was good at his job, as were his people. Then, I was confident in the skills of my team – my participant in the program – to produce a superior result, as was I confident in my own skills to manage a challenging situation.

So, Miguel, Chef and I first had a little laugh over the unintentional error. Then, with a positive and “can do” attitude existing between the three of us, we set out to solve the problem. There were some food items critical to the success of the program which were not present, and Chef needed to do some creative thinking to make sure these items would be available to us.

I started the program missing some of these items, knowing the wayward food would make its appearance when I needed it. It did. Hooray Chef and Miguel and the rest of the Hotel Team!

The lessons?

• Accept the situation completely for what it is, without judgment or blame placed on anyone (including myself)
• Trust in people to do their job well, willingly, and happily
• Keep a positive and cheerful frame of mind. It’s infectious and helps to get the job done quickly, successfully and efficiently
• Ask for what you want. People really do want to help you get it.