Are YOU a WALKING Health HAZARD?

‘Among the positive and negative Primacy Effect factors that, in my experience, interviewers, recruitment specialists and headhunters as well as clients have identified are set out in the list below. Many of these points are so obvious that they seem hardly worth mentioning. Indeed, one critic of a previous book of mine on personal impact matters wrote that he did not need Michael Shea to tell him to dry his palms and brush the dandruff from his shoulders before an interview.

He was wrong.

Many people do need just that (I met my journalist critic much later. He was a walking health hazard and worked from home since colleagues could not stand working beside him)’. This is a passage from the book, The Primacy Effect by Michael Shea. This positive and negative factors are: (10) POSITIVE………………..(1)NEGATIVE Speaks clearly………………………..Mutters Stands tall…………………………….Slouches Confident……………………………..Diffident Firm handshake……………………Wet handshake Good eyelock………………………..Shifty-eyed. Never looked at us Motivated…………………………….Didn’t know what he/she wanted Took the lead……………………….Always had to be prompted Well groomed………………………Scruffy Intelligently curious……………..Disinterested Well dressed………………………..Carelessly dressed Agreeable……………………………Surly I once asked a client to rate himself on the list of factors on a 10-1 scale. That is, the words in the left column would be a 10 rating. The word on the right a 1 rating. For the Speaks clearly vs Mutters factor my client gave himself an (8). His boss gave him a (4). This was a surprise to my client. Particularly on entry to a room or a video meeting the factors are particularly important.

Facial expression is extremely important.

As Eric Kandel maintains in his excellent book, The Age of Insight. ‘Faces are the most informative stimuli we ever perceive: Even a split second glimpse of a person’s face tells us their identity, sex, mood, age, mood, age, race and direction of attention.

Own the Conversation

Let me suggest you do this in the next seven days
  1. Rate yourself on the factors using the 10-1 rating system. (I understand in these COVID-19 times your rating your handshake may be difficult).
  2. Give the factors to a trusted person – without letting them see your rating – and ask them to rate you on the factors.
  3. Compare yours and the trusted person’s ratings.
  4. If there is a discrepancy in ratings, seek to understand the reason by discussing the rating with the person.
  5. If appropriate, start changing your behaviour, dress etc, so you’re perceived, as you want to be perceived.
++++++++++ p.s. here is a post with advice on creating presentations from luminary American film director and producer David Fincher

Five SURE FIRE ways to UP your LISTENING Game

“You can’t have an agenda,” Joel Peterson, the chairman of JetBlue Airways and founder of Peterson Partners, an investment firm, told me. “When you have your own agenda when you’re listening to someone, what you’re doing is you’re formulating your response rather than processing what the other person is saying.

You have to really be at home with yourself. If you have these driving needs to show off or be heard or whatever, then that kind of overwhelms the process. If you’re really grounded and at home with yourself, then you can actually get in the other person’s world, and I think that builds trust.” 

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The DANGER of NO Face-to-FACE meetings

‘And the third major challenge of a remote working environment identified by business leaders was the lack of observational learning.’

“I wouldn’t be chief executive of Dexus today if I didn’t have the learnings over a 30-year period. And that’s just simple things like being in meetings with people, watching how they interact and dealing with problems or how they change plans working through a development,” Mr Steinberg said.”

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TOM Brady’s TIP for IMPROVING

“Incentivise awareness

… managers should reward employees who detect flaws in their thinking and correct course. At the NeuroLeadership Institute, we have a ‘mistake of the month’ section in our monthly work-in-progress meetings to help model and celebrate this kind of admission.

To use a sports example, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady reportedly pays is defence if they can intercept his passes in practice . . . The takeaway: By making error detection a team sport, you destigmatize the situation, highlight the learning opportunities, and increase the likelihood of making better decisions in the future.”

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EVERY TIME you SPEAK, you’re AUDITIONING for leadership

Speaking, usually, is easy – especially when the stakes are low.

Speaking well, consistently – in any interaction, encounter, meeting, presentation, no matter the level of pressure, no matter the level of audience seniority or size of audience – for most people, is not easy.

Why do I mention this?

My view is that when you speak, you’re always auditioning for leadership. For example, if you make a cogent remark in a boardroom meeting where people with clout are sitting around the table – those people will remember you and your remark, and it might be the reason why you outpoint a colleague for a future, plum, high profile role.

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Obama’s SPEECH at 2020 DNC, Deconstructed

Once again Barack Obama gave a pitch-perfect, luminary presentation at the 2020 United Stage Democratic National Convention.

Overall, Obama’s most powerful channel was not his words, cadence, voice or body language. But his feeling tone.

It was a feeling tone that conveyed deep concern, sadness, pain, frustration and hope.

Here is analysis of certain segments of the presentation:

2:04 – 2:10 minute mark:  Use of the literary technique of ellipsis; ‘…marched for, went to jail for, fought for and died for’

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HOW to REDUCE your ‘ums’ & ‘ahs’ WHEN you SPEAK

If you’re like everyone I know – you, on occasion, insert an ‘um’ or an ‘ah’ filler syllable into your speaking.

If the ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ are infrequent, they usually won’t be noticed by your listener and won’t distract the listener from your messages.

However, when your ‘ums’, ‘ahs’ become noticeable and/or when people start counting the number of ‘ums’, ‘ahs’ as you are speaking – my suggestion is that you aim to reduce them in your speech.

Here’s a method to reduce ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ that is sourced from my therapy techniques as a speech pathologist.

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HOW to correctly SPEAK when WEARING a Face MASK

As you know you when you speak with a face mask on, your speech can be difficult to understand.

Here are techniques for speakers and listeners, for communicating in a face mask wearing world.

FOR SPEAKERS

#1 Use the ‘a metre beyond’ technique. As your voice will be muffled by the mask, one way to combat this effect is to use the ‘a metre beyond’ technique. Let me explain. Imagine that your voice is a laser and you put all of its energy through the laser directing it a metre beyond your listener. This technique will make it easier to hear your voice.

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