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Day: April 29, 2019

Categories
Body Language Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

Are You a Pleasant Experience Easily Forgotten?

“To be someone’s pleasant experience, you must evoke pleasure in them. Its longevity depends on how you extend it.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

“What was his name – you know, that guy that made me laugh so much? He was very pleasant. I wish I could remember his name.”

How many times has someone said that about you? If you don’t know, it’s probably because the person that made the statement never reached out to you. You were easily forgotten. No one wants to think they’re easily forgotten – especially after they’ve bestowed pleasant experiences upon someone.

I offer the following suggestions to become more memorable.

  1. Take the time to understand how individuals experience pleasure – Everyone doesn’t have the same sensations and thus, people experience pleasure differently. To put someone in a pleasant state of mind, you must understand their perspective (i.e. what’s funny, what’s sad, what they are seeking, what moves them). Once you have that insight, you’ll have a better idea of how to inflame their pleasure. And they’ll be more likely to remember you as the source that provided it.

 

  1. When someone is in a festive mood, say your name several times during the conversation. As an example, say, “I know you might think, oh Greg your self-effacing humor is hilarious – but Greg says, for me, it’s not hilarious, it’s my life!” (Do that with a shrug of exasperation to add more meaning and humor to your words. Also, using the ‘third person’ (i.e. “Greg says …”) can add a sense of comedy to your statements.). They’ll remember you easier if you repeat your name because your name will become more infused in their mind. And they’ll associate your name with the occurrence.

 

  1. Be engaging to the degree that your demeanor ignites emotions. People become moved to action via the emotions they experience and feel. To be more memorable, seek to arouse pleasant emotions that make people light up – you can detect this in the smile they display. Once they’re in such a state, keep them there through your actions as long as possible.

 

  1. To connect better, match the body language of those you’re connecting with. You may be familiar with the phrase, people like people that are like themselves. There’s truth in that statement because, psychologically, if you’re like someone, they see a reflection of themselves in you. You can enhance the connection when someone’s experiencing pleasure by getting closer to them physically, making the same body gestures they make (i.e. hand movements, facial expressions, reactions), and speaking at the same pace and rhythm. You’ll influence their subliminal perspective by doing that. And that’ll make you more memorable.

 

  1. When people experience pleasure, they associate whoever is around them with that experience. To be more memorable during such occasions, touch people in a manner that will make them feel good about you being with them – I’m not suggesting anything that’s inappropriate. The more sensations you ignite in them, the more memorable you’ll be.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

Not only do you shape a negotiation by what you say, and how you say it, you also shape it through the emotional arousal you awaken in the other negotiator. Thus, to endear yourself, make people remember the pleasant moments they have as you’re negotiating. When you reach a rough patch in the negotiation, you can attempt to put them back into a more pleasurable state by invoking the happier moments they’ve experienced with you. Doing that will help ease the tension in the negotiation and make it a more pleasurable experience. That will also cause others to remember you more fondly … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

 Listen to Greg’s podcast at https://anchor.fm/themasternegotiator

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

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Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

Einstein’s Window of Opportunity

Develop Your Open-Mindedness as a Leader

Let’s take a few minutes and think about opportunities. How many opportunities come your way and you take advantage of them? On the opposite side of the spectrum, how many opportunities pass in front of you and you either miss them or decide to wait for a better one to take advantage of? If you wait for the right opportunity, you may have a long wait. Many entrepreneurs and professionals that don’t get the results they deserve often suffer from a poor opportunity mindset. Do you?

Most people don’t like to take risks, yet leading an organization is a risk as you choose which direction to take the company and what decisions you make to grow the company. Moving forward is taking a risk. In order to take advantage of any window of opportunity, you are taking a risk.

“Risk is all around us. Life is a series of calculated risks. Everything you decide to do has a margin of risk. No outcome is ever 100 percent certain but it pays to calculated risks.”

– Thomas  Oppong

Opportunity Insights

 “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein

Crisis vs. Opportunity sometimes weighs the difference and yet a crisis can turn into an opportunity as you become more aware of what happened to make things into a crisis. Putting your attention onto what lies in front of you is a telling tale of how you can shift things into an opportunity to move your company forward. Problem-solving is concerned with what is going on now, or in the very near future.

Expand Your Unique Leadership Patterns

What you need is to think about your differentiators with regard to choosing the specific opportunity that will help you move forward? Your leadership style needs to expand to look beyond where you’ve been. With creative and innovative as today’s business trend, leaders need to take advantage of what you have and what’s needed to thrive from where you were. If you don’t take advantage of these you may find yourself either being passed by losing clients and customers, or a competitor may take you over.

As you learn new things, develop different perspectives about yourself and the world around you. Look for new and fresh experiences to discover new strategies for coping with stress at work and problem-solving.

Embrace the Opportunity Mindset

“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” – Milton Berle

Where others see problems, you see potential. When others are bogged down in endless details, you see the big picture. Be open to looking at different perspective to determine what you can take advantage of. Being open to what’s out there to grow your company requires you to be aware of everything and anything whether you take advantage of it or not.

Leadership Opportunity to Grow

“If a window of opportunity appears, don’t pull down the shade.” -Tom Peters

One of the most important opportunities leaders have is to grow personally and professionally. Here are a few ways you can grow within your company as a leader.

  • By changing your habits you need to put the time and effort into implementing them. Like everyone else you have certain habits that you do Monday through Friday that differ from your weekend habits.
  • Motivating your disengaged employees needs you to get them interested in the work your company is involved in. If you first find out what these employees are interested in giving them the opportunity to be creative and innovative instead of the traditional work they have been doing. This can turn them around as they may have been great employees who need something different to work on.
  • Watch for a trend that can help you move your company forward.

People often wait for opportunities, but is it worth waiting for opportunities? Many people say “No”. The reasons are noted above, plus the fact that many executives don’t want to change what you are currently doing. What makes you comfortable can ruin you. What makes you uncomfortable allows you to grow.

“There is a window of opportunity. Whether we, I mean all of us, use it or not, well it’s another question.” –Andrei Denisov

Opportunities are out there. Too many leaders prefer to stick with what you know that are similar to what you already do. In order to thrive, you need to take chances on new ideas that can help you move forward beyond your current expectation.

“If you cannot find the distinctive opportunities you want, you can create the distinctive opportunities you want but you can’t find!” ― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

The Fire Hose Effect

How the Power of Influence Can Keep You From Drowning 

I’ll be the first to admit that leaders have a tough gig. You wear hundreds of different hats, you shoulder an immense amount of responsibility, and it seems to never end. It can feel like you’re facing the fire hose every day! In my business, I meet leaders from all over the country, from different industries, and they all have the same challenges. I hear things like:

“Mona, even though the economy is great, and my industry is thriving, I’m still expected to do more with less.” Or,

“My customers have more buying power today than ever before making it harder and harder to secure customer loyalty.” Or,

“I’m struggling to keep employees engaged, and other companies are stealing my best talent, leaving me with open positions that are hard to fill.”

Sound familiar?

I get it, I used to be the consummate go-getter, can-doer, workhorse manager I thought my employer and my people needed… and sure, that got me results. But something was missing. I wasn’t getting the results I wanted or knew I could get!

Then someone told me that I just needed to shift my focus.

One of the biggest mistakes that leaders make today is that they overlook the vast amount of untapped wealth that’s right in front of them every day. We get so busy focusing on the projects, and customers right in front of us – above the surface – that we miss what we don’t see under the surface of the people we serve. And what lies beneath could potentially be a wealth of greatness!

So how do you tap into this greatness? The good news is, it’s not about working harder. And it’s definitely not about working smarter. I’m quite sure you do both very well. It’s merely about shifting your focus. Shifting from a traditional leadership model to an influential leadership model.

Let me ask you this: Do you believe talented leaders are born or made?

I think the answer is both.  Sure, there are some people with a raw talent they seem to be born with. But even the rest of us can learn the same skills – work the same muscles – and reach the same level of impact. While there are thousands of books on leadership, we tend to overcomplicate it.  Effectively guiding people to your common vision with excellence, really comes down to your ability to do one thing:

Influence.

This is where the rubber meets the road. So, what does it mean to influence? Or even more important – what does it take? Money? Prestige? Connections? A Best Seller? If those were true, how do you explain Mother Teresa, or Gandhi – who influenced the world with so little to their name?

Or how Abraham Lincoln was able to influence the world with a speech consisting of less than 300 words scribbled on a piece of paper?

Or how Martin Luther Kind drew over 200,000 to Washington, DC with no email or social media?

These people knew how to do one thing – influence.

Influence starts by building a connection. When we truly understand that connection and relationships are the ultimate fundamentals for us as leaders, we’re able to increase our influence, our effectiveness grows, and we become better leaders.

There’s power in influence, and this same power can be yours – right where you are – with the people you serve today. You HAVE the power to stop the fire hose. Not only could you be sitting on untapped wealth – it is your role as a leader, to bring out the strengths in you and your people.

In every person, just below the surface of what we think we know and what we think we’ve seen, lies untapped greatness.

What are you doing to tap into yours and that of the people you serve?