March 18, 2010

People Skills and the Philosophy of Honesty

In my view, you don’t have awesome people skills until you understand honesty and you apply it effectively in your social interactions. Which most people I believe, do not.

Yesterday, I was working with a client on improving one of those key people skills for getting a top job: his interview skills. He was asking me stuff like: What do I answer if they ask me about my career goals? What do I answer if they ask why I left me job? What do I answer if they ask me about my hobbies?

And I was answering: The truth. The truth. Yeah, still the truth. After about 3 questions like these, I started realizing a very common problem: my client was in a limiting mindframe about honesty, and the questions were coming from this mindframe.

Let’s do some theory. I think there are generally two mindframes (or philosophies) you can have about honesty in relating to others.

1. The mindframe that pleasing is the rule. These people believe that what comes out of their mouth must be what the listener wants to hear, must get the listener’s approval and appreciation.

Before saying anything, the people in this mindframe will ask themselves: what will please the other person? Then will say that thing, disregarding the concept of honesty. For them, honesty is only the exception to the rule, and they allow themselves to be honest only in a few cases, with safe people.

2. The mindframe that honesty is the rule. These people believe that integrity is the most important thing and what comes out of their mouth must be in correspondence with the facts.

Before saying anything, the people in this mindframe will ask themselves: what is the truth? Then they will say it, assuming the consequences of their honesty. For them, dishonesty is the exception and there will be very few cases where they will refrain themselves from being honest.

I’m not saying there are people who are liars all the time, and I’m not saying there are people who are honest all the time. I’m not saying lying is all bad, honesty is all good. That would be a bit extreme for my rational nature.

I am saying there are different philosophies in life, which will make you more oriented towards lying as you natural communication style, or towards honesty. And I am saying that the second one is a far better option.

When you live life with the mindframe that honesty is the rule with people, as well as the skills of honest communication, two very important things happen:

  • You don’t complicate and you don’t make social interactions a burden by trying to come up with what the other person wants to here almost every time;
  • You have credibility and you build much stronger relations with others, personal and professional, which are based on trust, respect and authenticity.

From some points of view, honesty with people is risky. Looking at things in perspective, I believe the gains substantially outweigh the loses. This is why, when it comes to people skills, I go for a philosophy of honesty.

Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, People Skills Tagged With: , , , 10 Comments
March 15, 2010

The Smart Things to Do For Charity

In the realm of people skills, it seems to me that to do things for charity is generally a much appreciated set of behaviors. This gets me thinking about whether charity activities are truly that good by themselves, or it depends on how exactly you do them.

Some friends of mine recently got involved in some volunteer work, planting trees as part of an ecological project. I respect the intention a lot, but I started wondering about this kind of work in relation with myself: Is this the best thing for me to do for charity? Is using a shovel the best I have to offer?

Let’s look at some of the popular things to do for charity: planting trees, collecting garbage, handing-out flyers, building stuff and feeding people. They all involve a lot of hand work and a blue-collar type set of skills.

Now let’s look at the profile and skills of people who do things for charity: they are often smart, responsible, well educated, and financially stable. They have professional, white-collar type skills like accounting, sales, management, HR, training, PR etc.

Do you see an incompatibility here? These friends of mine I’m talking about, they have some very good professional and people skills. But they do not involve digging, moving heavy stuff or working in the cold. Yet, like a lot of people who do things for charity, they opt for this kind of stuff, instead of something which is connected with their skills.

Why? This, from my perspective, is impractical. If the point of charity activities is to help others as much as you can, then it makes sense to choose things to do for charity which you’re very good at. The smart way to do charity involves these steps:

  • Know your top strengths and skills, know how you can provide the most value;
  • Identify charity activities which make use of these strengths and skills;
  • Do those as charity instead of following the pack.

I know that a lot of times, skilled people end up volunteering in work that doesn’t mach their skills because they believe these are the kind of things which charity is about. But this is a false presumption. You can do charity and help other in a lot of ways.

Think of rock stars that don’t do charity by planting trees, but by doing charity concerts and using their top skills: singing, entertaining. And they raise a tone of money. Think of people who just give money for charity and they spend their time working in something they’re good at, making those money.

My version of doing things for charity is that every once in a while I coach, train or speak for free at different events, for various organizations, on topics gravitating around people skills. This is what I know best. But I don’t go out there moving sacks of cement from one place to another, which a 14-year old could do better than me.

In the area of people skills, doing things for charity is truly a mastered skilled if you do it in the right way, the efficient way. Then, you’re truly helping the people in need to a great degree, instead of just doing stuff so you can feel good about yourself. This is for me, what charity is all about.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Lifestyle, People Skills Tagged With: , , , 19 Comments
March 11, 2010

I Have People Skills!

At a recent training covering certain people skills, one participant kept asking why we’re talking about various stuff, because he’s an experienced manager who knows all this stuff and has good people skills.

Later in the training, this participant was involved in a role-play where we observed his people skills, especially those related to conflict management. The manager not only broke almost every rule for effective conflict management in the book, but even some which aren’t even in the book and now should be taken into account.

It didn’t surprise me, considering that in my work as a communication coach, I find it common for people with bad people skills to believe they have good people skills. When it comes to this area, it’s easy is to have huge blind spots, the size of the dark spots on the moon.

This particular experience though, reminded me of a scene in Office Space, a dead-on satire on the corporate life and one of my favorite movies. Here it is:

I constantly encourage people to put aside their presumptions about their skills and look at the facts as objectively as they can. Since our mind can fabricate our self-image to a great deal, by looking at the facts they will often discover unexpected things.

The line in the movie scene which names the title of this article gets me laughing every time: “I have people skills!“

Filed Under: Inspirational, People Skills Tagged With: , , 2 Comments
March 10, 2010

Ideas With A Kick Is Now People Skills Decoded

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the brand of my blog, in relation with my brand as a communication coach and my expertise in the area of people skills. And I realized it just doesn’t cut it. So I decided to choose a new name and a corespondent domain for my blog.

I am now proud to present People Skills Decoded: the reinvented Ideas With A Kick. I will continue to write on personal development in general, but with a stronger emphasis on people skills and communication skills, which are what my professional life is all about (not to mention a big part of my personal life).

If you are subscribed to Ideas With A Kick, either by email or RSS feed, have no fear, your subscription will change automatically to People Skills Decoded.

If on your blog or website, you have posts, pages or articles with links to Ideas With A Kick, please change the names of the links to People Skills Decoded and their targets accordingly. Thank you and enjoy the new blog brand.

Filed Under: People Skills Tagged With: , , , , ,
March 7, 2010

How Knowing Yourself Can Improve Your People Skills

Finding my niche as a communication coach and figuring the lifestyle that suits me was not a revelation, it was a process. One of the stepping stones in this process was knowing myself thoroughly and understanding what I have to offer.

An interesting side effect was how much I improved my people skills, as a result of improving my self-knowledge. There is an obvious link between knowing yourself and choosing the right career. I discovered there is also a strong but more subtle link between knowing yourself and your people skills.

It’s funny how the effective personal development in one area often starts in another, apparently far away area. Here are some specific ways I experienced myself how knowing yourself can improve your people skills:

1. More social confidence. When you know yourself well, you know what you are about and you understand your strengths. From this place, confidence to put yourself out there often comes naturally. Knowing yourself often pushes you to meet people and to express yourself socially.

On the other hand, people who have a blurry image about themselves are more reluctant to put themselves out there. They don’t even understand who the person they put out there is, so they often have superficial interactions with others.

2. Building comfort. I realized one of the best ways to make people feel comfortable with you is to give them the chance to know you as a person. And you do this by expressing your thoughts, values, passions, emotions, in a powerful way.

But of course, in order to do this, you have to know them. As you know and open yourself up authentically, it’s easier for other people to reciprocate by opening themselves up. This two-way process is essential in building strong relations.

3. Investing in the right relations. How often have you heard people complaining about how they have the wrong friends or relationships? It’s easy to get caught up in time and energy consuming relations with people who are not a good fit for you when you don’t know yourself.

However, when you understand yourself, your intuition and your logic will better tell you who is a good fit for you. This will help you invest time and energy in maintaining and growing the relations with the right people for you, and letting the other ones fade.

There is a very simple lesson here: if you want to improve your people skills but you don’t know yourself very well, forget your people skills for a while and focus on this aspect. Get to know yourself better and as you do, you will improve your people skills and you will also create a solid foundation for them.

Filed Under: People Skills, Personal Development Tagged With: , , , , 13 Comments
March 1, 2010

Taking Success Advice from Successful People Is Not a Good Idea

I was recently watching the last The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien, in which he said goodbye to NBC and his fans. His memorable last words were: “If you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you: amazing things will happen”.

I’m sure Conan O’Brien is a cool guy and I think he has some great achievements, but if working hard and being kind were the only two ingredients for amazing things to happen in one’s life (aka being successful), we would have a lot more successful people, living amazing lives.

I believe that sometimes, successful people can give powerful success advice. I personally know some who do. However, I believe this is rather the exception than the rule, and in most cases, taking success advice from successful people is not such a good idea.

The main reason is the fact there is a huge difference between being successful and being able to understand success and teach it to others. Here are some phenomena which often happen with successful people:

  • They’re naturals. They do things in a certain way out of instinct, and this gives them results. But they don’t really know what exactly they’re doing which gets them success, even if they think they do. So they will often give advice like: “Just be yourself. Act naturally.” Ha?
  • They may consciously try certain things which give them the results they want, but they try multiple things at once and they’re not able understand which one of them exactly works and is the true source of their success.
  • They discover things which help them get results, in their context, and they wrongly believe these things apply to everyone, in every context. They generalize quickly, ignoring the specifics of each human being and each situation.
  • They lack the skills to present and explain their ideas for success in a very clear and meaningful way, which would make the advice truly useful.

I know that successful people are given a lot of credibility in offering advice for success, and sometimes for personal development. People think that someone who has success is the best to teach it. Considering the points above, you can see why this is faulty logic.

Successful people need a lot more than success to also provide solid success advice. They need a high degree of awareness, analytical skills, scientific, critical thinking, communication and people skills. Only then, you can rely on them to give powerful success advice.

Beyond successful people, I believe there is one other category of people which is usually much better at giving success advice. I call them modelers. They’re the people who observe, study and model successful people, extracting the patterns of success.

Why are they better at giving success advice? For one, because they generally have a lot more of the skills presented above, which are required to understand and teach success. And also, because they don’t stop at modeling just one successful person.

It’s great that you’re looking to understand success and use this understanding in your personal development. In this journey, remember that choosing the proper sources for success advice can be just as important.

Filed Under: Psychology, Success Tagged With: , , , , , , 13 Comments
February 24, 2010

Debunking Subliminal Tapes

For a lot of the people who know me or read my stuff, I have a sort of reputation as a debunker. A big part of my activity involves discovering and promoting some ideas for personal development and improving people skills, another big part involves showing the flaws in other ideas, to facilitate effective growth.

I believe there are a tone of people skills and personal development ideas out there, most of which only generate marginal improvements, and this is why I think debunking some can be as important as supporting others.

Today, my focus is on debunking subliminal tapes. And I’m going to use for this an excerpt from the book “Psychological Foundations of Success” by Dr. Stephen Kraus, a Harvard-trained scientist and a business consultant. I think his words do the debunking better than mine ever could.

Let’s consider an example of success snake oil: subliminal self-help tapes. These tapes are a multi-million dollar business, and it is easy to see why. Their promise of easy, effortless change is a marketer’s dream. Simply listen to the tapes, we are told, and although the subliminal messages in them can’t be heard audibly, they tap the power of the subconscious mind to bring about massive change and success. If you want to lose weight, for example, there’s no need for the inconvenience of exercise or the sacrifices involved with healthy eating – simply listen to the tapes and pounds will melt away. And losing weight is just one example – other tapes promise to boost self-esteem, improve memory, increase worker productivity, and even aid in the recovery from sexual abuse. There’s only one problem: they don’t work.3 If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is – and effortless change via subliminal tapes is indeed too good to be true. Every independent scientific study has reached the same conclusion – these tapes are a waste of money. […]

Despite numerous studies demonstrating that subliminal tapes are worthless, people continue buying them in large numbers. The problem is that manufacturers of these products have become experts at deceptive marketing, and they conveniently ignore the carefully-conducted studies demonstrating the ineffectiveness of the tapes. As Anthony Pratkanis put it, “Tape company representatives are likely to provide you with a rather lengthy list of ‘studies’ demonstrating their claims. Don’t be fooled. The studies on these lists fall into two camps – those done by the tape companies and for which full write-ups are often not available, and those that have titles that sound as if they apply to subliminal influence, but really don’t.”

These deceptive marketers often point to one study in particular, known to many as the “Eat Popcorn/Drink Coke” study. Conducted in the late 1950s, this study flashed the messages “Eat Popcorn” and “Drink Coke” briefly on a movie screen. Thousands of moviegoers were supposedly exposed to these messages over the course of six weeks, and the result was reportedly an increase in Coke sales of 18% and in popcorn sales of nearly 58%. Reports of the study fueled international outrage – several countries outlawed subliminal advertising, and the Federal Communications Commission threatened to strip the broadcast license of anyone using subliminal advertising. Amidst this well-publicized furor, a much quieter development was unfolding. Researchers throughout the world were trying – and failing – to replicate the dramatic findings of the Eat Popcorn/Drink Coke study. A Canadian television show, for example, flashed the subliminal message “Phone Now” during its regular airing. Not only was there no increase in phone calls, but when viewers were asked to guess what the message had been, none of the 500 who guessed did so correctly (interestingly, nearly half reported feeling hungry or thirsty, demonstrating not the power of subliminal persuasion, but rather the power of suggestion – those familiar with the Eat Popcorn/Drink Coke study experienced what they expected to experience). This and other failures to replicate the original never got the widespread publicity of the initial study. The media sells stories, and the story that marketers are manipulating our unconscious minds sells well, whereas a story of carefully-conducted research failing to confirm the initial results is decidedly less sexy.

Here’s another fact that didn’t get much publicity: James Vicary, the author of the initial study, admitted in 1962 that he had simply made up the results to attract customers for his failing marketing business. Regardless, this “study” and others like it, fueled by a growing distrust of advertisers, became ingrained in American popular culture. By the early 1980s, more than four-in-five Americans had heard of subliminal advertising, and of those, two-in-three believed it could be effective in selling products. By the 1990s, $50 million a year or more were being spent annually on subliminal success products, despite a total lack of compelling evidence that they work.

How’s this for real personal development science?

Filed Under: Psychology, Success Tagged With: , , 7 Comments
February 19, 2010

You Can’t Handle the Truth

I remember a conversation I had with a female friend who was telling me upset about a comment her boyfriend made related to her appearance:

Her: “He said I have thick thighs. I can believe it!”

Me: “I thought you wanted people to be honest with you. And he’s being honest.”

Her: “Yeah, but c’mon: how can he say that to me? I’m sensible about my appearance!”

Almost every person you ask will say that honesty is one of the top traits she’s looking for in other people: friends, lovers, colleagues or business partners. This is one of those things which are easier said than done. Because when most persons actually meet very honest people and they get a dose of that honesty, their reactions to it commonly suggest something different from their statements.

I believe that in fact, most people are rarely exposed to real honesty about things which they may not take so well. Usually for good reason. Sure, they may say they want honesty about everything, and it might truly be important for them from certain points of view.

But at the same time, a lot of the people they know will not believe this is true, or they will not be willing to risk it. So they will be honest and say the truth to them, only as long as they’re talking about the good or the neutral stuff. When it comes to the negative stuff though, they’ll find ways to avoid the subject, slip out of the conversation, or they’ll just lie and consider they’re tactful, they (yuck!) have people skills.

In my coaching, I will often give a client an honest feedback about a certain shortcoming. For example, I’ll say: “I think you’re listening skills are pretty bad and you could benefit a lot from improving them. You interrupted me almost every time I was talking; you repeatedly asked me questions I’ve already answered and you seem to me to often be in your head when I’m saying something.”

Even though I’ll usually phrase this feedback in a tactful, respectful way, the verbal and nonverbal response the client will give me usually indicates he is blown away by such an honest feedback and he didn’t see it coming. I often get responses like: “I’m not used to being said things like that from people.” What a surprise!

I highly encourage you to notice your emotional and behavioral reactions when someone gives you an honest feedback stating some negative things. Acknowledge your real reactions, not the ones you wish you would have. Then decide to look for very honest people, and to appreciate their honesty, even if sometimes you feel hurt because of it or you get defensive.

If you discover that your external reactions to negative feedback are not the most constructive you could have, work on them as part of improving your people skills. Even if you still hurt on the inside, don’t let this turn into pain for the other person.

Long term, the most important people skills development step you can take in this area is building some emotional toughness. This means you can take a negative feedback without feeling hurt. You can look for the value in the feedback, use it and react in a constructive way towards the feedback giver and his honesty.

I believe that building emotional toughness is one of the key ways you can become able to handle the truth no matter what a person’s truth is, and you can create more honesty and openness in the relations you have.

Filed Under: Attitude, People Skills Tagged With: , , , 18 Comments
February 15, 2010

Get Your Stuff Together Instead of Using Distractions

To a great extent, I’m a hedonist: I believe in doing the things you enjoy, maximizing your pleasure and not compromising pointlessly. At the same time, I notice that a lot of times, doing the things we enjoy is an ineffective way of running from the things which don’t work in our lives, a way of distracting ourselves.

What are distractions? Well, they’re pleasure-giving activities (which is good), used to shift our attentions from thoughts or facts that make us feel pain. Which can be very, very bad. Using distractions is like covering your eyes so you don’t see something you don’t want to see, or sinking your head underwater so you don’t hear something you don’t want to hear.

Very common things like listening to music, dancing, drinking, eating, sex, watching a movie, playing games, taking a vacation, even reading inspirational stuff, are all very pleasurable activities, which can also be used as distractions.

Why can using distractions be bad? Before I answer, I’ll mention the good part: there are specific contexts when using distractions can be a constructive way to handle things. For example, if you recently lost a job you had for many years, or a relationship you had for many years, the initial psychological pain will usually drop naturally, as time passes. So, some distractions can be a good way to not think about the event for a while, and then go back to the event with some distance from it. This way, you will not suffer as much.

But (there is almost always a ‘but’ with me)…  more often than not, distractions are only a way of mentally running from the things you don’t like so you won’t have to deal with them. They work as a quick remedy for the suffering, without fixing the problem. As the real problem is still not addressed, your mind will constantly refocus on it, and you constantly need to fight back using distractions, which is usually either hard or impossible.

There’s more: as you use a distraction more and more, you often build tolerance to it and you need bigger doses to get the same effect. This is one way to create alcohol addicts, eating addicts, sex addicts, and yes, even partying addicts. Needles to say that because all of this, distractions are a poor long-term solutions to suffering.

The effective solution in the long run is to address the things you don’t like and get your stuff together (and I’m using a euphemism here). Practically, there are only 2 ways you can go, both typically involving personal development:

  1. Either you change your external reality, handle that job you’re bored with, that relationship which doesn’t work anymore, that extra weight and so on, or
  2. You change your internal reality, you change your expectations and beliefs, so you learn to accept the external reality and it doesn’t bother you anymore.

I don’t think one way is always best. Sometimes it’s important to take action, sometimes it’s important to let go. You will have to decide on your own which way to get your stuff together works best, depending on the specifics of your situations.

Either way, it starts here: stop and think about the things you enjoy a lot. Maybe so much that you see them as a way to ‘escape’. Could they be distractions? If the answer is yes, then what are you distracting yourself from? As you identify and address the issues in your life and get your stuff together, you become more able to do the things you enjoy independent of the distraction they provide.

Filed Under: Attitude, Inspirational, Psychology Tagged With: , , , , , 11 Comments