This video shows Benjamin Zander in full glory presenting at TED.com. Being a world-class conductor, he speaks to influence and leadership using marvelous musical analogies. He has wonderful stories that are worth the video themselves as well. And his shoe salesmen joke is a classic example of looking for solutions.
Deep full-life transformation
There is an organization that helps their clients truly transform their lives. The Care Center in Nashua, NH.
Their clients move from…
fear to confidence
despair to hope
and
homelessness to security.
I’ve had the deep honor of interviewing a number of their past clients. Almost every one has talked about living a life of fear,
in a home where the mother’s and children’s physical safety was always questioned…
or one step away from living on streets…
The Transitional Housing Program (their flagship service) is a tightly run process that truly gives the women and their families every opportunity and every tool that they need to transform their life.
They told me that the major ingredient the clients must bring to it is their own grit. They must also believe in the future life they want for themselves and their children. They have to adapt to the supportive guidelines, heal their emotional wounds in therapy, learn new parenting skills, and improve the way they deal with finances. When they did all of this, they succeeded.
I noticed that what usually first drove the women to the Care Center was fear and pain. What then helped the successful ones to transform their life was a vision of greater health, security and well-being for themselves and their children.
There are powerful lessons for all of us in changing our own lives.
- Let the fear motivate you away from the danger; and then use the love for self and others to motivate to greater things.
- Be willing to adapt to radically new ways of doing things.
- Be grateful to those that offer you help – and take advantage of all the resources you can on your journey.
In the next few weeks I’m going to post video of some of the interviews, so that you too can be inspired by these heroic women.
The Power of gratitude – the benefits of giving thanks
Giving thanks
Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. It is an opportunity to pause and take stock of what I am grateful for. In addition to turkey I can fill myself with the warm realization of what is good in my life.
Gratitude has a profound impact at work as well.
The obvious benefits of gratitude are:
- When we thank others, it reinforces the behaviors we most want
- It helps others to feel good about the way they impact us
- We strengthen our relationships with those we’re grateful to
The less obvious, but equally powerful benefits are:
- We positively change our own brain chemistry! Gratitude, and the mental images of things we like, trigger the release of endorphins and other biochemicals. These help us relax, recharge and refocus. We are then able to think more creatively, flexibly and positively.
- These same changes influence our tone of voice, facial expression and even the words we use. Making us far more likely to positively influence others
- There’s increasing evidence of a correlation between positive attitudes and health and longevity. That’s delightful.
- Positive, grateful people tend to be more popular. I don’t know about you, but I find that helps me in so many ways.
I’ve found that I can hone this skill to the point of proactively looking for what I like about people and what they do and then causally mentioning these things in conversations, during trainings, etc. Sincere references like this help build rapport, enable others to feel safe opening up with me, and often engender return positivity.
Here are three ways you can use this power this week:
- Gratitude List: Create a list of the people you are grateful to and why.
- Gratitude Letter: Write a letter to someone who has positively influenced your life. Sending it makes it even better, although just the writing is enough to shift your own perspective.
- Mention sincere praise to five people a day for the next two weeks. This helps it become a skill you can use any time, and hopefully a popularity-growing habit will form!
You depend on good relationships for almost everything you do in life. You might as well hone the powerful of gratitude to be happier, more successful and heck, it might even help you live longer!
For more information on building resilience through influencing yourself go to my post on this topic.
There’s also a great article in the Wall Street Journal on this topic.
Conference room combat to improv jazz – true story
This is a true story of Improv Leadership creating more dynamic presentations.
This is a guest post from a good friend and colleague of mine, Eric. He is a senior healthcare architect who has mastered the art of co-design with his clients using improv leader and solution-focus techniques. Here’s his story:
My work as a healthcare planner requires a capacity to talk about complex medical issues and translate those issues into a spatial solution for my firm’s clients; there is, of course, never enough time, space or money!
In the past, those meetings have been “conference room combat” for me, now they are “improv jazz”!
The difference?
- I have come to recognize that the best solution is not “my solution” but is truly owned by the folks who will use the end result (the implemented plan). By freeing myself up from the presumption that, as the “planning expert” I must generate the “best plan”, I create the opportunity for me to participate freely in the dialogue. That dialogue, in turn, is free to head into unexpected turf and unconventional, but effective solutions.
- Once I frame alternatives as potentials for them to review, criticize, examine, take apart and reassemble, clients actually respect my professional skills more, rather than less. It removes the “yes/no” charge from discussions about solutions, and directs the discussion into the wonderful grey area of “what if?” where true can emerge. We focus intuitively on the positive and the potential, and view obstacles as opportunities to be mastered!
- By engaging in dialogue, my clients understand that I view their expertise and experience as critical to the process. When clinicians are invited to participate, they focus on real issues, rather than “grandstanding” or politicizing the process.
In “conference room combat”, someone may appear to win, but ultimately, everyone loses. The end product suffers. By creating an environment that allows fluidity of thought everyone has a voice at the table, and the result is an improvisational work session that can truly lead to better, more dynamic and optimal solutions.
Eric R. Lautzenheiser, AIA, ACHA
Director of Health Facilities Planning
If you have a story to share and want to be a guest blogger here, let me know.
Influencing a community to help the homeless
Have you ever wondered how to ignite passion for your goals with large groups? How to involve people to gain helpful input and buy-in? How to inspire people to follow-through with meaningful contributions?
Would you like to observe, or better yet participate, in a unique, free community summit?
Join me in a high-energy, fun, and emotionally meaningful event at the Harbor Homes Nashua Care Center, November 8, 2010 (click here for event information)
This special collaborative summit is an important part of the strategic planning process for the Care Center, a phenomenal nonprofit that you can think of as the “Harvard of the Homeless.” This center offers a “hand-up” to women who are committed to transforming their lives in order to achieve a stable home for themselves and their children. Graduates come from hard-knock situations and go through powerful programs to gain the skills, emotional stability and education to become strong, healthy, contributing citizens.
If you’re like me and you find REAL change an inspiring and fulfilling experience in your life, please come with an open mind and heart. You’ll hear a few stories from graduates of this challenging program, and from others who have been fulfilled by contributing to its success.
Then-and this truly is the fun part-you’ll join in a brainstorming session to uncover fresh ideas to help the Care Center be even more transformative going forward. You’ll see the power of Appreciative Inquiry and other positive-change tools in action. And you know me, it will be highly engaging, with lots of laughs, interaction, and insight.
Building resilience – not just managing stress
I have had the absolute pleasure to present a few Resilience workshops recently. They’re usually called “Stress Management training” for the client because that’s what people are used to. Yet, as the old saw goes, “prevention is the best cure”. It’s far easier to build resilience in yourself and your team, rather than try to manage tons of stress after it’s built up a lot.
One of the key factors in building and maintaining resilience is the way we influence ourselves. The influence skills we’ve been talking about in this blog are just as relevant for your inner world and personal life, as they are for professional success.
Some of the key elements that are so helpful for resilience are
- Identifying F Responses (fight, flight or freeze) in yourself and intentionally applying “R Responses” (relax, recharge and refocus)
- Giving yourself feedforward rather than scathing feedback when you can
- Focusing on clear, inspiring goals
- The “yes and” approach embedded in Improvisational Leadership
- Soothing images, like the ones I’ve posted
- And of course, “Influence your mood”
Build your resilience and thrive!
My newly branded firm – press release
ignite. involve. inspire.
I’ve decided to make my consulting presence more clearly branded with my style of high energy and motivation.
We’re putting on all kinds of goodies – resources on influence, motivation, strength-based movements. We hope to see you there!
Feedforward – a positive alternative to feedback
Sometimes we have to do it, but feedback is tough… even when intentions are good (and we know that they’re not always).
Feedback often triggers “F Responses” (fight, flight or freeze) as we fear judgement, criticism and useless opinions. It can push people away.
Feedback also assumes that we are right about what we’re giving our opinion on. That can be incredibly presumptuous since we rarely know all that went into the decision-making and actions of the person we’re “educating”.
As Marshal Goldsmith talks about in his video, Feedforward is much easier to take, more motivating and helpful.
Ideas to help us succeed in the future are so much more empowering and useful.
Feedforward also tends to get to the point – the goal – much faster.
Next time you want to give feedback to someone, ask yourself, “Am I doing this to help the other person succeed, or for my own needs?”
If this is to help them succeed, then maybe feedforward ideas on how to be more succesful in the future might be a lot more helpful than feedback.
If it’s for your own needs – find another way that doesn’t push people away from you.
Attitude is Altitude – focus on what you HAVE
Nick Vujicic. This man is INCREDIBLE! 
He is a living embodiment that attitude is critical. If he is so positive and inspirational, imagine what can you do when you focus on living your dreams. attitudeisaltitude.com
When team members compete – who wins?
I often ask this question during speeches or trainings, “When you all compete among yourselves, who wins?”
Every time some people respond immediately with, “Nobody”.
I then say, “someone wins”… After a few seconds the light bulb goes on over some people’s heads and they yell out, “our competitors”.
Our brain triggers “F Responses” (fight, flight and freeze) when we’re under stress and we begin treating other team members as enemies. We can feel so righteous and sure of ourselves when we’re doing this (this is the adrenaline, cortisol, etc., pumping through our bodies). Yet when we step back it’s so clear that we win the most when we collaborate.
That’s part of why I talk about “R Responses” as a way to cool off and see the situation more clearly… and begin to see our co-workers as the team members they actually are.