Love and Work

Today is Valentine's Day, when we think a lot about love. Most of the focus is on romantic love, hearts and flowers, and all that.

Let's take a moment to recognize another aspect of love: the love we express when we work.

 

Gifts from the Heart

No matter what form your work takes, when you show up and contribute energy, smarts, and time, you are sharing your uniqueness.

 

You may think of your value in terms of the tasks you perform. Yes, that contribution is important.

 

How you do those tasks and interact with people is at least as important. You have a direct effect on the well-being of those around you. Perhaps you wouldn't say you love every one of those people. Just the same, they feel your presence -- and your love.

 

Even better, what is good for you, i.e., whatever nurtures your soul, gives you joy, makes your day, is also good for the people around you.

Doing Work You Love

A real luxury in life is getting to do work that you love. Those moments of being fully absorbed, creating results, helping people, learning, succeeding, and being recognized, are sources of motivation.

 

If this is a frequent experience for you, congratulations.

 

If you don't have much of that, guess what? It is up to you to get creative in your career. Whether by enhancing what you are doing now, or following your heart to make a change, or finding a way to do what you love outside of work, you have to express your gift.

 

An Underrated Resource

For some bizarre reason, work cultures often undermine or discount the gifts of the heart.

 

HR manager and author Tony DeBlauwe has identified a condition he calls EAD, or Employee Adaptive Displacement, which names the hidden demoralization of many people at work. You can read his recent blog post and download the full paper for more of Tony's insight.

 

These workers' hearts are not engaged. Not only are they unhappy, they are not performing at their potential. 

 

Engaging the heart has many benefits. The Institute of Heartmath offers statistics proving that the heart has many times more electrical current than the brain.

 

They and others also show that appreciation and gratitude reduce stress and increase health at work. There are lots of reasons for your left brain to buy into the love thing. Today, use the excuse that it is Valentine's Day!

 

A Round of Appreciation

Why not add a few ounces of appreciation for yourself and others today?

 

Start by recognizing the commitment it takes for you to do your work, to offer your skills, and to help the team.

Give yourself some appreciation for that!

 

Look around, either in person or in your mind, at the people in your work life. Is it not some form of love that they express each day?

 

It may seem strange to think of our presence and our contributions as love.  Try putting on that filter and experience the giving and receiving of love that constitutes work. Open your heart to the possibilities.

 

Share the love this Valentine's Day.  Namaste. 

 

(You can read the Messenger, including Why Influence? at http://emailbrain.com/new/viewnewsletter2.aspx?SiteID=9958&SID=1&NewsletterID=1065542)

Who Wins? Influencing for Mutual Benefit

It could have happened to anyone. I was on a rare visit to a mega shopping mall to exchange a Christmas gift. There in the middle of the shoppers, displays, and kiosks, I had a moment of uncertainty about where to find my destination.  Immediately I was approached by a young woman from a kiosk. She asked me a question and I didn't catch what she was saying at first, so I turned to hear her.

 

By that time, we were discussing whether I knew about collagen and she was offering me free samples. Enough rapport had been created for me to come over to her booth and sit while she applied lotion to one side of my face!

 

Both she and her manager then exerted some fine influencing skills with the goal of making a sale. At first, it was a sale of several hundred dollars worth of products that would last me a year. The deal was actually not outrageous at all. By the time I left, I was being offered a $59 deal, due to my very good fortune of being there when the manager just happened to stop by.

I was on my way to a particular store with one errand in mind, and a desire to get home soon. The fact that I even considered the purchase is a testament to their selling skills.

 

Applying a SYNTAX Influence filter, I observe that they definitely know their goal. They also adjust it based on their assessment of the situation. We move from a full line of products to "which one do you like the best?" The attractive young woman built rapport, first enough to draw me in, then enough to discuss where she is from, my own family background, our ages and skin, and how wonderful the product is.

 

I accepted the offer of having the stuff put on me (though I would have been happier if they did both sides of my face!). They did their best to lead me to the next goal. I made the counteroffer that I would take their contact information and think about it. Because I was clear on my goals, I could engage with them and still decline their offer.

 

I laughed when someone else working for the same company approached me at the next corner. I told her I already had the product on one side of my face. She began to use several of the closing strategies they had used--how lucky I was that she could make an exception for me and give me the best price.

 

She didn't have much hope of building the rapport this time, as I was no longer in a moment of unclear destination and I already knew the scoop. She did help me locate the store I wanted to find. I received the benefit I needed and was soon enough on my way home.

 

Was there anything they could have done to get me to their outcome? Maybe not. That's the benefit of keeping my goals in mind.

 

Did they achieve part of their goal? Yes, I am attracted to their products and might actually plan to purchase one item from them in the future. I will have had time for my own decision strategy to work. I don't usually decide on an unplanned purchase without sleeping on it. For sure, I know more about their product than I did before.

 

At another time or context, if I were less grounded, unclear on my goal or if I didn't feel as free to decline the offer, the outcome might have been different. 

 

To be truly masterful in a relationship-based sale, they would have detected my decision strategy and worked with it; as it was, they were in a transactional sale where they either ring the cash register or they don't. 

 

If they interact with enough people, I imagine they make enough sales to do well. Retail is tough, especially out in the mall corridor. I speculate that this particular group, from a culture where bargaining is much more direct than in most of the US, has much more freedom and range to use selling skills than, say, a midwestern US native. 

 

When we are influencing others, our flexibility is a big factor in who wins, i.e. whether we get the outcome we are after.  Short term, the most flexibility wins the day.  I believe that to be truly influential you have to take the other person's outcome into account. In longer term relationships, nobody wins if both don't win.

 

The best influencing skills are those that find a way for all parties' needs to be met. If it weren't for my moment of disorientation in the mall, I wouldn't have engaged with the sellers in the first place.

 

When I choose to enter a conversation or negotiation, it is in part because of a desire for mutual benefit. 

 

My interaction with the skincare ladies was mutually beneficial - it went just as far as it served both of us. I had fun and I hope they did too!

 

 

How to (Almost) Read Minds: Teleseminar replay

How valuable would it be to know how to tailor your communication so it makes the most sense to the other person? 
To be persuasive to them?


How to (Almost) Read Minds
with Lucy Freedman
Join me for a 45-minute tour of your sphere of influence. Learn how to tune in to what is important to your customers, co-workers, anyone you want to influence to get things done. 


Email syntaxoffice@syntx.com for the link to the replay.

Ethics of Influence

Last week I was invited to be the guest on Hollis Polk's internet radio show, "Your Life, Your Relationships." As I prepared to talk about increasing our influence in personal life, I realized that the use of power in personal relationships is a deep and complex subject.

Influencing at Work

Usually, when teaching or coaching in a corporate or government setting, I  encourage each person to be as influential as possible. Assuming that your intentions are at least somewhat on behalf of the organization and its customers, you want to be as influential as you can in carrying out your role.

 

In large systems, getting anything done relies on influencing skills combined with position power, intelligence, and leadership. One of my favorite things about influencing skills is that anyone can use them and be powerful.

 

Influencing in Personal Relationships

Influence also happens in relationships with family and friends. In personal life, the question of who gets his or her way is different from what happens at work.  Where there are children or elders, the capacity of the participants is unequal. The nature of the family unit or community is that it exists for its own sake, not simply to accomplish external goals.

Within that context, there may be greater felt constraints on how we influence, as well as an overriding need for harmony.

 

The idea that we would consciously attempt to influence our family and friends might seem foreign, and even unethical. as if we were scheming against them. The idea that we would not be attempting to influence them is pretty far out also.

 

Of course we have influence within our close relationships. It may not work as well as we would like, and we might not admit it. Whether we like it or not, we influence just bybeing there. We can't not influence each other, so let's be conscious of how we do it. 

 

Are You Playing Games?

Whoever has the communication skills to influence others is going to get his or her way more of the time than someone who doesn't. This can be aboveboard or it can be more devious.

 

In transactional analysis, maneuvers that discount someone or something are called "games," and are basically unethical ways to influence. Typically, they don't even accomplish the intended goal for the person who initiates them.

 

Ethical Influencing

Consider these three qualities that can make our influence more ethical - i.e., not scheming against our closest relations.

 

1. Concern for the good of all.

If it's genuine, then any outcome we have for ourselves will take others' needs into account. 

 

2. Respect for each person's own version of reality and appropriate stage of development.

Even if my plan seems better for someone else than theirs, they get to decide for themselves. This, of course, has to be modified when the person is four years old or sometimes when he or she is incapacitated.

 

In general, people can be allowed to decide more for themselves than their close relations may want them to. Beware of power games that interfere with respecting the other person's point of view. When in doubt, consult with someone who is not a party to the issue.  

 

3. Transparency.

If we withhold relevant information, or are not willing to say what our intention is, or try to get someone else to do our dirty work for us, we are setting up a negative payoff either sooner or later. It's a good self-test--would I be willing to share my thinking with the person I am trying to influence? If not, I may be up to something that I've rationalized to myself which is really underhanded.

 

If these three principles are honored, the rest is up to skill.

Are you good at conveying what you want so that others can hear and be motivated to support you?

 

Are you able to say no diplomatically and hear it with grace?

 

Have you invested enough in others' emotional bank accounts that they are willing to invest in yours?

 

As you step forward in 2012, make your family and friendships a source of cooperation and joy in your life by exerting your influence with ethics.

2012: What It Means

Every new year is an opportunity to re-set our expectations, our intentions, and our attitude just by recognizing our movement through time. 2012 has been imbued with additional meaning, all the way from "the end of the world as we know it" to our more immediate issues of politics and social change. 

From the Mayan calendar we learn that we are in transition times from one cycle of almost thirty thousand years to the next one. It may be hard to believe that human beings could be tuned in to such long cycles that reach so long before our memories and so far into our future. 

 

We do know that we are part of larger cycles of time. Most recently, the Age of Aquarius was heralded as a time bringing in a new peaceful order. As we look and listen to what's happening now, it can seem that we are going in the other direction: unrest, poverty, climate change, civil and international wars. 

 

Some say that this is a stage of clearing. When you go into a room that has been darkened and you turn on the light, you may see a lot of dirt and cobwebs that were not visible before. I love our ability to reframe our experience so that we can be encouraged in the face of discouraging circumstances. 

 

There are many examples of how people rise above extremely tough times. Even when Viktor Frankl was held in a Nazi concentration camp, he refused to let his captors take away his dignity and hope for humanity. Christianity is built on the triumph of hope over despair in the story of Jesus. We have all probably been inspired by someone in our own lives whose light overcame darkness.

 

We are all capable of that kind of transformation. Even on a minor scale, without being imprisoned or crucified, we have the choice of turning on a light for ourselves and for others.

 

We may need reminders of this on a regular basis. I know I do. Whether it comes in the form of a notable year, a moment in time, or inspiration through challenges near or far, it is up to each of us to pay attention to the reminders.

 

Whatever the large-scale events, threats, or calendars bring to us, transformation comes back to being a personal choice. As we enter 2012, how willing are you to clear out negativity, reach out to people who could use your help, and "be the change you want to see in the world"?

 

Listen to how you speak, be aware that each action has a ripple effect, and remember that we are all in this together. That will give meaning to the year 2012 for you and those around you without having to know whether the Mayan calendar or any other cosmic turnings really hold sway.

 

I personally like the message of the book 2012: The Transformation from the Love of Power to the Power of Love by Robert Roskind with Mayan elder Tata Pedro Cruz, which shares the ancient knowledge for our modern time.

 

That is my wish for you, dear reader, that your life will be filled with the Power of Love in 2012.

Gaining Influence in Your Career - Interview by Tony DeBlauwe

http://www.examiner.com/human-resources-in-san-francisco/gaining-influence-your-career
Please visit, enjoy the article, and leave a comment there!

Choosing Happiness

What is happiness? What does it take to be happy? We all want to feel happy. Do we know how?
It seems we were born knowing how. Babies show their feelings -- and happiness is definitely among them.

Sometimes we fall out of the state of happiness and want to find ways to get back there. Various aspects of these Happy Holidays can be stressful, including basic things like bad weather, traffic, or too much to do.

Well-known NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) author and trainer Suzi Smith spoke about happiness on a webinar this week. Happiness has been shown to increase longevity, and has health benefits, in addition to being desirable in itself.

She reminded us of several basic NLP techniques for returning to a happy state of mind. One was to become conscious of the content of our thoughts. If they are negative, change to positive content. For instance, when you make a mistake, look for solutions and learning rather than beating yourself up. The important thing is to become conscious of those negative thoughts.

Suzi told some good stories and used NLP anchoring to give us the choice of waking up to a happy day when our feet first hit the floor in the morning. Thanks, Suzi, for that holiday gift!

There is so much in NLP, and in Suzi's wisdom, that she was able to go over many useful strategies even in a short session.

One of the interesting things that came up was a participant, I think from Germany, saying that his clients ask, "But what about all the things I have to do?" I think how we handle that question is the key to maintaining a happy state of mind.

Thinking about what I have to do has several drawbacks. One is that it can take me out of my body and the immediate present. Another is that it can invoke worry about future actions. I can start feeling stressed and under time pressure. The feeling of being rushed and having too much to do gets in the way of my feeling happy.

The positive intention behind thinking about what I have to do, i.e., getting me to do it, is worthwhile. I do want to be motivated to take care of my responsibilities and accomplish my dreams.

This intention can be accomplished with joy. I find it easier to do it with joy if I connect with my real motivation - the reason I have to do whatever it is.

In most cases, what I have to do is to keep myself and my loved ones happy and well. That is a joyful prospect and I am glad to do it. I appreciate the reminders that bring me back to that awareness.

Yesterday at a meeting of the South Bay OD Network, speaker Karen Colligan brought up happiness in the context of work. She had us think about a time we loved what we were doing. It's great to be able to have that kind of feeling while earning a living.

If it turns out that your job is not what you totally love doing, you have the choice of focusing on the things it allows you to do that you do love.

My work has some parts I don't love doing. It helps me to be happy doing them when I step into the feeling I'll have when they are done. And then remember to savor it when it really is done. I just love that cleared-off desk!

OK, you probably have much bigger things to be happy about than clearing your desk. Focus on those!

Happiness is contagious. Research on social networks* has shown that we are 15% more likely to be happy if someone we are directly connected with is happy, and 10% if a friend of a friend is happy. We are even 6% more likely to say we are happy if our friend's friend's friend is happy. Even if we haven't met them. The researchers conclude that "having more friends is not enough--having more happy friends is the key to our own emotional well-being."

So let this note be a reminder to be conscious of your thoughts, choose happiness, and be sure to spread it around.

*From the book Connected by Nicholas A. Christakis, MD, PhD, and James H. Fowler, PhD. 2009.