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Success

Stressed? Make It Work For You

By Jack Malcolm / 4.7.2020 / No Comment

This may be the most important post you read during this crisis. Not because I’m so smart, but because the idea is so simple, so timely, and so powerful. The idea is this: stress can hurt you or help you, and you can decide which it is.

Most people think that stress is bad for you, and they’re right. But some people think stress is good for you—and they’re also right! Your mindset about stress makes all the difference.

It sounds like pop psychobabble, but it’s supported by plenty of recent research, as reported in an article entitled, Stress Can Be Your Friend, by Kari Leibowitz and Alia Crum, two Stanford researchers who explain the idea and provide three simple steps to make stress work for you rather than against you in today’s New York Times.

The key is to acknowledge, own and use your stress in three steps:

Acknowledge your stress—don’t try to ignore it, because that just makes it more likely that you’re going to think about it and of course stress out even more.
Own your stress—the positive thing about stress is that we feel it because we feel a threat to something that is important to us. Owning your stress reminds you and connects you to what you value.
Use your stress—stress can provide energy and focus your mind, both of which you should channel in a productive direction to achieve your goals and realize your values.

How can you start applying this idea right now?

Reading the original article online because they explain it better and more credibly than I do.
The article has a link to a free video course which further explains the science behind it and provides practical ways to turn the three steps into a habit. (I’ve included the link here in case you can’t access the article).
If you’re interested in learning more, I recommend an excellent book, The Upside of Stress : Why Stress Is Good for You, and How to Get Good at It, by Kelly McGonigal (Or read my own Cliff’s Notes version)

Simple, powerful, and oh, so timely. It may not seem like it right now, but we will get through this crisis eventually. The questions is: will we emerge weaker or stronger? It’s our choice.

Uncategorized

What’s Wrong with Social Distancing

By Jack Malcolm / 3.16.2020 / No Comment

In the past week or two, a new phrase has entered our common discussion: social distancing. I don’t know who came up with it, but I think it’s an unfortunate way to describe what we should be doing. I wish they had called it something like physical distancing.

Now is the time for social closeness, not distancing. Please don’t get me wrong; I’m not advocating doing anything unsafe, and I do take this coronavirus crisis seriously. But, precisely because we should take it so seriously, I advocate getting closer to the people who are important in your life—not physically but at least virtually.

It’s more important than ever to draw close. Having been through a number of hurricanes and their aftermaths, I’ve seen how difficult times can pull a community together as people pitch in to help each other without keeping score. Neighbors coming together and pooling their stored food for an impromptu cookout, running an extension cord to share some of your generator power, giving someone a gallon of gasoline, clearing trees off the road, and so on.

That kind of togetherness helps people in practical ways, but its true value is psychological, because it’s so much easier to cope with difficulties when you’re connected to something larger than yourself.

But this situation is different, because doing something for someone may actually put them in danger. A small example: when I went to retrieve my Sunday paper yesterday, I found it at my doorstep, thanks to a kind neighbor who likes to do that for people during her early morning walk. Normally, I’m grateful for that, but this morning, the first thing I did after taking the paper out of its wrapper was wash my hands for twenty seconds (although I forgot to sing “I Will Survive”). I bring my mother groceries so she won’t go to the store herself (and she is the most stubborn and independent-minded 97-year-old you will ever meet), but that increases the risk that I might bring the bug to her. You can’t eliminate all the risks but you can at least try to be smart about it.

Fortunately, we’re the first generation in history that has the means to undergo physical distancing and still stay socially close. We are better equipped than ever before to handle physical isolation, because at least we have Facetime and other ways to stay in touch. Let’s use our social media, phones, video streaming for their highest and best use: actually getting closer to one another.

Call your parents, or your kids or your grandkids. Call that old friend you haven’t talked to in quite a while, and see how they’re doing. Check on your neighbors to see if they need anything. We may not be able to shake hands, but we can still reach out and touch someone, as the old AT&T commercial used to urge us.

Physical distancing? Of course! Social distancing? No way!

Lean Communication - Presentations

Does This Presentation Make Me Sound Fat?

By Jack Malcolm / 2.19.2020 / No Comment

When information bloat meets shrinking attention spans, those who know how to communicate lean by adding maximum value with minimum waste, will stand out. To be lean, you must carefully guard against the “fat” of irrelevant material.

How much irrelevant material is in your presentation? Probably far more than you think. Despite your best efforts to clarify your main point and carefully select just the data you need to support your arguments, there are still many insidious ways that information can creep into your presentation.

Irrelevant information is like unwanted empty calories that somehow latch on to fat cells in your content and bloat your presentation beyond recognition.

If it does not add value to the listener or does not support your main point, it does not belong. While no one sets out to purposely include irrelevant material, it forces its way in for several reasons:

Information compulsion. This phenomenon was described by journalist Tom Wolfe, who said, “people have an overwhelming need to tell you something that you don’t know, even when it’s not in their best interest.”[i]
Self-serving excuses or boasting. When you want to make yourself look good, you might talk about how hard you’ve been working or the difficulties you’ve overcome to get the information.
Excessive context. Decisions are about the future, but too many people spend far too much time talking about how we got to this point rather than where we need to go next.
Editorial commentary. It’s tempting to tell people how they should react to a situation, but sometimes the facts best speak for themselves.
Neat stuff. Have you ever come across a visual or a chart that is just so cool that you have to include it in your presentation? Before you do, ask yourself what point it serves or how it advances your argument.
You see a lot of this in presentations; it includes such things as opening amenities, your “corporate story”, and all the stuff your legal and marketing departments force you to put on your slides.

[i] Cited in Marshall Goldsmith, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, p. 107.

Persuasive communication

Seeking Approval? Answer this Question First

By Jack Malcolm / 2.12.2020 / No Comment

When I work with coaching clients to help them become more effective communicators, they often ask me how to sell an idea internally, perhaps to their boss or to another group within the company whose cooperation they need. My first question is always, “What’s in it for them to agree?”

Almost invariably—after a long pause—the answer comes back, “I haven’t thought about it that way.” That’s because people are so focused on their own reasons for doing things that they neglect the reasons that matter to the people who control whether those things get done.

For a before-and-after example of outside-in thinking, I’m reminded of a presentation one of my students put together for the workshop I was running on internal presentations. He was organizing a presentation to convince the CFO to approve a budget variance in order to purchase new workstations for his veteran engineers. Economic conditions had put the company in a spending freeze, and a request of this sort required special approval.

For his first effort, he justified the need by explaining that newer engineers received new workstations when they came on board, while those with longer tenure were stuck with older models. He said it was causing friction and morale problems, and he wanted to be fair to his more senior staff. I asked him what was the likelihood that the CFO would actually are whether the engineers were happy. He admitted that the probable response would be that everyone has to make sacrifices during this tough period.

I then asked him, what would the CFO care about? After a little brainstorming, he came up with reasoning that the newer workstations would improve productivity of the entire team through their superior performance, which would reduce the risk of delays in launching a new product. The resulting presentation was much more focused on the needs of the person making the decision, and I heard later that the request was approved.

What’s in it for them to agree? It’s such an obvious question that sometimes I’m abashed that I actually get paid to ask it—but it works.