Busting Myths: What You Can Learn From MythBusters to Be More Strategic

By Anne Warfield, April 9th, 2012

We sat with our eyes glued to the TV as we watched the MythBusters debunk how the shark in the movie Jaws was killed at the end of the movie.  They came to the conclusion that the gun would have never penetrated the canister and killed the shark. Oh, but it looked so good in the movie!

MythBusters has grown in popularity as the continue to find new ways to test “theories,” “urban legends” or just funny moments like could you really blow up multiple golf holes like in the movie Caddy Shack?  They also do historical reviews such as their one on taking Da Vinci’s blueprints and using only materials and tools from that time, creating the object and testing if it would have worked or not.

MythBusters works on several levels because of these factors:

1. Your brain is naturally defensive.  It is why we thrive on negative news more than positive news.  We are constantly thrilled to see if something can be “debunked.”

2. Plays with curiosity.  They take things that are theories and establishes them as fact or fiction.  Haven’t you ever wondered if an elevator was falling and you jumped in the air right before it crashed would you be okay? (The answer is no. You would be a flattened pancake).  What about all those Hollywood stunts- would falling off a building and landing on an awning save you?

3. Has fun.  The people on the show have fun while they do these wacky experiments.  This fun plays through in their banter and dialogue.

So how can you use MythBusters to be more strategic when you speak?

1. First and foremost just watching the show will give you some fun new openings to use when you speak.

2. As you watch an episode decided ahead of time whether you think the myth will be true and false and WRITE DOWN why you think that.

3.  Once the results come in look for patterns in your thinking that can be flaws.  Did you buy in to something being possible because you forgot to look at what was probable?  Did you miss some critical factor and if so, which one did you discount?  This will start to help you to quiet your mind so you listen better and so you weigh information to know what to throw out and what to pay attention to.

4. Look at how much skepticism keeps you from “hearing or seeing” all the information.  Skepticism can be healthy but too much can kill your ability to listen and think without judgement.

Take Action:  Watch MythBusters this week and see if you can utilize their episode in your next meeting or presentation.

For example, imagine you are presenting a new product your company is launching that is unproven in the market.  You could say, “500 years ago Leonardo Da Vinci created an underwater breathing apparatus.  It was designed way before anyone ever created an actual underwater breathing apparatus.  So MythBusters took his diagram and tested it to see if, using the materials from that time, would the breathing apparatus work?  It did!  So why wasn’t it created before?  Because it was so far out there at the time no one believed it could work.  Today we are about to launch our new product and become the next Da Vinci of creating something never done before.”

Learn more about the Outcome Focus® Leadership Development Training by contacting Paul Cummings at 952-921-9421

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Leadership Development: When is Success, Success?

By Anne Warfield, April 6th, 2012

Have you ever wondered when you know you are successful?  And why can you feel successful one day and then the next feel unsuccessful?

Success is one of those elusive terms that is so hard to pin down because it means something different to each person.  For a person making $70,000 a year in sales, jumping to $300,000 in sales is successful.  While for someone making a million in sales, bringing in only $300,000 is unsuccessful.

Success is something personal that each person needs to define for themselves.  Ironically your success if often evaluated by you based on what is most important in your life at that moment.  So let’s say you value work really highly and you drive yourself to become the CEO of a major corporation.  You would feel very successful.  But the next day you find out your wife is leaving you and you realize you should have valued family higher- now you probably feel unsuccessful.

So why am I even writing about this?  Because I want you to realize that success is a journey, not a destination.  THE SUCCESS is HOW you take that journey not just the results of the journey.  I find much more success in figuring out my flaws then in just wrapping myself in my results.  Finding the flaws, owning them and then trying to fix them is a much harder journey but one that usually brings me to a much better spot.  I just have to trust in the journey.

Each day define your success for that day.  Realize it is a moving target but it is definitely in your reach.  Reach high, don’t be afraid to fail and continue to challenge yourself to grow.

Learn more about the Outcome Focus® Leadership Development Training by contacting Paul Cummings at 952-921-9421

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Presentation Skills: How To Get Timing of a Talk Right

By Anne Warfield, April 4th, 2012

If you want people to act on what you say, an important element is knowing WHEN to say your piece and when to hold your peace.

I have seen many conversations fail, not because the words weren’t right but because the timing was so poor that the words couldn’t even be heard.

So here are some guidelines to help you facilitate change by managing the receptivity factor:

1. Approach at a time when emotions aren’t high.  Your natural tendency will be to approach the other person while it is still “fresh” on your mind.  This leads you to dump on the other person while they are still in a fragile stage because they have just completed the tasks.  Their brain will immediately try to defend and see you as the obstacle.

2. Pick a quiet peaceful time generally about 24 hours AFTER the event.

3. Time it to coincide with their own goals.  So instead of pointing out “you lost your audience yesterday when you asked them to…” you tie it to their own goals- “as a valuable leader people look to you to direct them on context, therefore, yesterday when you asked them to… without setting context you cause them to feel lost.  This lost feeling will cause them to pull away from you.”  Notice that I have aligned with the person’s goal of being a valuable leader.  This moves it from a “mistake” to being an “opportunity” for improvement.  Small difference but huge to a person’s brain.

4. Give them digestive time.  People need time to take in what you say and process it.  So waiting 24 hours and then telling the person right before they head in to a big meeting is counterproductive as their brain will be angry that they have to stuff what you just told them in order to move to their next meeting.  So make sure there is adequate time to “hear” the information, digest it and then process it.

If you follow these four you should be able to have robust conversations.  I also find that the 24 hour rule of waiting to approach the person allows ME time to digest and see if MY perspective is right.  Nine times out of 10 I find that I am reacting to something and blowing it out of proportion so this allows me to pull the perspective in so I gain a wider viewpoint.

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Leadership Development: How Competent Are You?

By Anne Warfield, April 2nd, 2012

An interesting study was done to find out how good we are at rating our own intelligence.  In this study they had a person (I will call them A)  rate how competent and intelligent they thought they were.  Then they had another unknown person (I will call them B)  sit in a waiting room.  Then they had the A person walk in to the room, pick up the newspaper, read an article from the paper out loud and then leave. They then asked the B person to rate the A person’s intelligence.

Now remember they had only had this one five minute interaction.  At first the B person said they couldn’t rate how intelligent the person was because they only had five minutes with them but finally they would do it.

They then had the A person take a test to find out their intelligence.  Guess who guessed it most accurately?  Yep. you guessed it- Person B!

Even though person A had the advantage of years of report cards and business reviews to show them their intelligence they OVERRATED their own intelligence.

We are not able to clearly see who we are and what our flaws are because our brain is designed to protect us.  So we often dismiss the data that is right in front of our face. This is why you can have a good friend that is dating the same type of person over and over and over yet they can’t understand why they keep finding Mr. Wrong.  You want to scream at them because that is who they pick out.

According to a Novation’s report called “closing the Gap” managers rate their direct reports as significantly more dependent then the direct reports rated themselves.  On average direct reports rated themselves at 2.38 whereas managers rated their performance at a 1.90- which equates to about a half of a stage of development.

So how do you get past this gap to find out how you are really performing?

1. Stop asking how you are doing.  This only causes the person to relate to you how you are doing in relation to the present job that you have.  This doesn’t really tell you what you need to improve on to be seen as being able to reach the next level.

2. Start asking “if you were to imagine me performing the job at the next level up from mine, what would you say I need to improve on before that could happen?  This gets them to compare you to the next level and that is where the true feed back comes from.  This is where you find out you really need to work on.

3. Work on improving and then check in on how you are doing.  Instead of waiting for the formal review time, start working on what they said you need to improve on.  Then check in on how you are progressing. Continue doing this on at least a quarterly basis.  Next review time you will have no surprises.

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Presentation Skills: How to Speak With Authority & Authenticity

By Anne Warfield, March 30th, 2012

As he spoke, not a sound went through room.  It was one of those moments where you felt a pin could drop and everyone would hear it. So what makes someone so important and mesmerizing that you can’t break away even to text or twitter?

He spoke with authority and authenticity. His speech had the feeling of a man who lived his talk and then shared it with you, not in the guise of trying to convince you but to bring you on the journey.

Speaking with authority is not about knowledge but about bringing the context of knowledge to life.  It is about having a presence that is vibrating with goodness. It is about not asking the audience to validate you with laughter and applause but for you to validate the audience by drawing out all the goodness and knowledge in them so they can more fully participate at work and at life.

In order to speak with authority and authenticity you need to master the following:

1. Know what details to pay attention to.  People who speak with authority know which details are relevant to share and which are not in order to get their point across.

2. Care about your audience.  You need to be there for them, not expect them to be there for you.  They are what is most important- not you, not your speech and not applause.  They need to FEEL that you are talking to just them.

3. Be comfortable with you.  It is not about theatrics or knowing where to move.  It is about letting your movements come naturally because you are speaking from both your head and your heart.  When you speak authentically your body language flows naturally.

4. Know the goal.  You have to know, not what you are going to say, but what they need to hear.  It is all about them.  You are just the messenger.

5. Practice your opening. The first few minutes you speak will always be the most nerve-racking because those first few moments transform the energy in the room.  So at that time you don’t want to be worried about what you are going to say. You want to be able to look at them, feel them and manage the energy in the room.  So I recommend you know the first five minutes of what you are going to say and you know it well.  Don’t write it out because that will make your brain cause you to speak flat like you are reading something rather than living it.  Instead just practice it out loud until you feel one with it so you can let go of protecting you and instead be there for your audience.

Great speeches come from speaking with the head and the heart.

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What Does Kari Bale’s Body Language Tell You?

By Anne Warfield, March 28th, 2012

I was just on the radio to share perceptions of Kari Bale’s reaction to the news that her husband potentially shot innocent citizens and children in Afghanistan and then turned himself in.

So what did the interview with Matt Lauer tell us?

There are four body language signs that Kari used:

1. Shaking her head back and forth when answering questions.

2. Looking up to her left when answering whether she believed he had done this.

3. Rubbing her right finger over her left hand while in her lap.

4. Smiling.

Now what do all of these signs mean and what do they tell us about what she was saying?

Kari’s shaking of her head while she talked showed her distrust feelings about what she heard and how she couldn’t reconcile it with the man she knew.  Literally her brain was saying “no, no, no, he couldn’t have done this.”

Her looking up to the left was her brain’s attempt to pull the factual logical information she knew about her husband and link it with this new information she was hearing.  It is why you keep hearing her say, “I need the facts.”

Her rubbing of her hand was a way of comforting herself during a tough time and her smile was her brain trying to hold on to life as she knows it.  Remember her reality is the life she and her husband had when he was last home.

It was interesting to me that people were wondering if her shaking of her head meant she wasn’t telling the truth and they thought this was supported by her smiling.  The reality though is the shaking of her head was disbelief in what she heard or inability to reconcile it with life as she knows it and the smiling is the brains attempt to put on a brave face.

I share this with you because when you are in a meeting you will have to match the words and body language to find the truth in the message.  Sometimes a person will tell you what they think you want to hear and other times they really truly don’t believe what they are hearing.

So when you see body language that you can’t figure out, stay in curiosity and ask questions so you can find the real source of the meaning that is hidden underneath.

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Strategic Presentation Skills: How to Appear Wise

By Anne Warfield, March 26th, 2012

In the Descendents, George Clooney’s character, when dialoguing about how much money he wanted his kids to have, he said ” I want them to have enough to do something but not enough to do nothing.”  

That is one of those lines that stops you because it is insightful, profound and easy to wrap your brain around.  When you are able to speak in a way that you get people to stop and THINK that is when you become seen by others as being wise.

It is little twists that can make a big difference in how someone sees and responds to what you are saying.  I find I am constantly jotting down quotes from movies because they spark thought.  I think use these quotes, giving the correct attribution, when I speak.

Here are some other favorites of mine:

“You must think like a man of action and act like a man of thought.” from the movie, the International.

“We had one of those good solid man moments where everything gets said but nobody’s talking.”  from the TV Series, Cougartown

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”  Stephen Covey

You may have noticed something in the above quotes- they play off of the same word or phrase but flip it around to give it a different meaning.  There is a power in the duality that comes out as words flip spots to change meanings or as in the International movie quote, they are broken in to smaller parts to align in a new way.  In the case of the Cougartown quote it speaks volumes about the difference between men and women by defining a man moment as one where the talking happens without speaking.

John Maxwell is really good at creating pithy phrases that play around in your head.  I recommend you get his books and study how he can change the way you see something by simply changing the order of the words.

Now I am not saying this comes easy.  It takes practice and it starts with raising your awareness of words and phrases around you.  Listen with, not only your ears, but with your heart.  What hits you and sticks?  Why does it stick?

As Einstein said,  ”Your imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.”  So keep open to seeing things in a new way and playing with words and phrases to see how they feel to you.

So here is the kicker- because you are working your brain and getting it so see things in a new way, you actually do become wiser.  You become more aware of your surroundings, more insightful as a listener, and more careful with your speech.

Lastly, remember that it takes time.  Einstein wrote a lengthy letter to his cousin and at the end he wrote “I am sorry this is so long. If I had more time I could have made it brief.”

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