Missed Messages: Convincing & Leadership

Lessons Learned

The core concepts in both parts 3 & 4 of the book seem to be able to be expressed as outgrowths of both sincerity and empathy. There are some that would say that it is important to include humility in this, but I find that when you are able to show both qualities with skill, then things such as humility come naturally.

This is also the part of the book where a person might start realizing exactly what it is they've done wrong in the past. I mean sure, so much of what is presented seems like real common sense, but I'm certain that people have begun to see just how difficult common sense can be to recognize before it's too late. And that's not really a crime. We all do it at some point or another, when we get wrapped up in just what's immediately around us and what it is that's important in our own cosmos at the moment. But it's when you remember the portions of sincerity and empathy that you can both show others where you are at while you try to build a bridge into where the other person is at.

Application

• You can't win an argument - This is one I am making a real effort to remember, because I do now realize just how true that is. Debates, discussions, and criticism are all different than arguments, and I remember just how I feel after being argued with and made to feel like there's no way out except to roll over and surrender. It's never worked in getting me to change, and I need to stop arguing as much as I do if I expect to get better results.
• Let others save face - This goes with the first point I'm working on; don't defeat my opponent, make them an ally. There are many that may not want to resolve things like that, but I'm more likely to get cooperation from those that just want to be redeemed by allowing this more.
• Faults can be corrected - This also comes back to my need to let go of control. When I correct and am successful in pointing out what is wrong, saving face can mean letting the other person work on the correction. It's also important for me to make it clear that the problem can be corrected to make it easier to get to that point.

Application - Goals, Values, and Ethics

I don't think there is much that I can change about myself after this section of class, except for a renewed sense of conviction in my personal ethos. Everything that was discussed either seemed to be lessons I already had discovered, or redundant strategies for getting to places I felt I already was.

I appreciate that as a class, our ethics were not supposed to be made to conform. It is something I try to practice myself. In the end, it is this conviction and understanding I think I will best take away with me.

Lessons Learned - Goals, Values, and Ethics

I do not have traditional values. I think this comes from having so many clashes with family and other authority figures when I was young, and the ensuing stages of situational evaluation that came during adolescence. I am not religious, I do not conform to a single political ideology, I do not find comfort in pop culture movements. I also do not scorn others for spiritual leanings, a conviction in political values, or enjoyment of pop culture trends.

I have an unconventional relationship with my girlfriend, one which has it's roots in our shared troubles with divorced parents. I have socially liberal viewpoints with economic pragmatism and a belief that a system of leadership cannot be either good or evil. My faith in organized religion was broken when I saw how the historical injustices that were carried out in the name of deities, but were initiated by humans that took advantage of others... but I do not deny that there might be some higher power, just that it is a higher power that is too much to be summed up by a single mortal philosophy and ethos. I feel that the past two generation the preceded mine created one of the most selfish and arrogant world environments the human race has ever seen, but I do not think that there is nothing of value I can learn from individuals older than myself that offer to help my generation correct past mistakes. These are just some of the conclusions I have in my life that form my own core values and ethics.

My goals are set, but the path I take to get there is not a static one. I know what kind of person I want to be, and what I want to offer to everyone else. I learned in class that these concepts I have about my outlook are not wrong or have been found in strange ways, but that they only work when I stick to them and persevere.

Personal Motto

I like to think that I am more complex and multi-faceted than a single motto. So, in an attempt to satisfy my own ego's need to continue to be different and my desire to maintain my GPA, I present my "Situational Mottos";

Professional Motto

"Any job worth doing is also worth making better"

It's not good enough to just do a job and keep doing it the same way over and over. Don't just memorize how a task is done; learn why it's done and then identify how it might be done better. Eliminate the inefficiency, increase the output (either by finding new data or additional results), and better learn the details of what happens.

Social Life Motto

"Life's too short for mediocre fun"

This applies to eating food that's boring, going places that don't surprise me, hanging out with people that don't add something to my life, or just participating because "everyone else does". This also means that I try and find ways to turn new social situations into exceptional experiences; learn new facts, share new stories, or just learn about new people.

Personal Life Motto

"A Life lived at the expense of others is a life's worth lessened"

I have been used, and I have seen others used. I cannot say that I am a completely altruistic individual, but I can take control and make choices when I recognize them to benefit more people than just myself. I can choose to support businesses that I feel enrich the community, I can choose to stand by friends when their life gets complicated, and can choose to learn more about a person before I make personal judgments.

Self Image Motto

"I am better than the sum of my faults"

This comes down to more of a mantra, something I am working to remind myself of when i find things becoming more and more difficult. I have strengths, I have worth, and I contribute more to society and my chosen social circles than I take. I do rely on others to help prop me up many times, but I can still stand tall later by giving back and using what strengths I have to help others stand tall.

Applications - Self-disclosure

• Choose for your audience - The people you speak to want to hear what is significant and what is worth the time taken to devote their attention. By that same note, they want to feel assured that you understand who it is you are speaking to and that you will keep things in a context appropriate to them.

• Remember to convey intent - This ties in with my first item: Remember when speaking that you show the intent behind your words to those you are speaking to. If you just lay information out without the intent you want others to take it in, then you are forcing them to apply their own filters which might distort what you meant.

• Be as honest as is appropriate - Honesty and sincerity are invaluable tools, but you do not always need to disclose all information to get your point across. Disclose only what is relevant to the topic, what conveys your intent, and what it is that will keep everyone communicating together.

Lessons Learned: Self-disclosure

Hiep keeps telling us to put ourselves on the line, to break down out barriers. I want to say that I feel good about sharing what I did... I could have talked about something as simple as the first time I used a computer, or the first time I won a chess tournament. But I took the moment that galvanized my my hate of personal violence and my loss of faith in organized spirituality.

I regret sharing what I did. I think it was more than the rest were willing to know, a bit deeper than they were willing to see me. It would be easy to just play up my own mask of the tech nerd, the guy with the weird hobbies, the man with too many words. It's not comfortable for people to think there's something else that might be existing deeper, another person that could have been sitting where I do.

I do not regret pushing my boundaries, because it's one of the aspects of myself that I do need to work more on, but I should have chosen better for my audience. I'm supposed to be going into marketing, and that doesn't mean honesty, it means illusion painted using honesty. It means that I should be revealing just enough to sell myself and my product, enough to give people the picture (information) they need with the colors (details & values) they want. I'm going to keep pushing myself, but I do need to better remember the audience and what it is they want me to be.

Missed Messages: Handling People & Being Liked

Lessons Learned

What can you lean about these pieces of adult life, especially from a book? These are supposed to be parts of life that we should know and understand by the time we reach high school, and yet it is true that certain fundamental truths of interacting person-to-person can be so mysterious. Not just to me, not just to a select minority, but to everyone in some sort of way. We all have our blind spots, and it is perhaps by reading about them and understand what they might be that we will best be able to spot them.

I do not believe that reading a book will make me more likable, I do not think that I will gain a sudden ability to handle other people I have difficulty with. But I do think that by reading this book, I have looked a bit closer at myself and what I do when interacting with others. I have flaws that will always remain with me, and that is an acceptance which brings me a shard of self-peace. But that does not mean that I think I cannot improve, because if I do that then I have nothing left but despair.

Applications

It's hard to give specific examples of how I can make this section of the book apply to my life. I knew the concepts, but I may not have always remembered them. I know the value of a smile, I know what it means to speak and listen... but it is hard to practice it all the time. Ego, pride, hate, sadness, and apathy are something we all feel at times, and these stand opposed to all the principles that allow us to make meaningful relationship connections... but it is a part of the human condition that they must be accepted as a part of life. So if I am to take anything and apply it, it is that I need to remember that what goes around, comes around. If I want to be understood and accepted during my times of failing, I need to do the same to others.

Applications - Self Awareness

To be more self aware, I think what I really need to do is communicate better with those I trust. I'm finding that many of the times I lose my focus to my weaknesses it is because I have shut myself off from talking about what is causing me to shut down. By seeking these points of objectivity that know who I am as a person and know the full honest me, they can help me realize what I would say to myself; that is, what a calm and objective me would say to the me that is unable to rise above his failings.

If I can learn to adjust this, I think I can also learn to adjust how I apply myself to my strengths. I can make them more efficient without having to get into my downwards slope of becoming too detail oriented.

Self Awareness - Lessons Learned

I know who I am. That is to say, I know that my concept of identity is a complex one and that I seem to be vividly aware of many of my faults and my strengths. However, having that knowledge and being able to exercise the ability to see myself objectively at all times are two very different things.

To others I have many faces; I am a son in exile, a loving boyfriend, a traitor, a victim, a visionary, a tragic loss, a promising potential, a solid pillar in times of need... and so much more. To myself, I am aspects of all these in one way or another. To myself, at my core, I am a man who still feels like a boy who is always finding himself wondering where his place is. I have plans, yes, but I still feel like they are just going to be a step to something else or will be changed at a moment's notice.

I know who I am, and I know that many times people only see one aspect or see me distorted by context... but even if I know who I am, I still am learning how to live up to what I should be.

Applications - Persuasion

Of what I learned in the book, here's a couple of my thoughts on using them:

• Arguments - I need to practice this more. I come from a family that always argued, and rarely sought mediation. I'm still trying to bring myself away from this, and it's become obvious I need to practice more.
• Dramatize thoughts - This is a dangerous one in my opinion. Too much and too little can be much worse than not at all. Currently I try and work from logic, but maybe I need to work on this a bit more.

Lessons Learned - Class 10: Persuasion

I need practice. I'm not just talking about practice on speaking or participating or on a skill... I need to practice everything in one way or another before I do it. I can only function in my life by practicing what I do to a point where it becomes a pattern I can live by. When I was in sales and service, this practice was the only thing that allowed me to understand how I could persuade people about what I knew.

I knew games, pieces of fiction and distraction that I had enjoyed since I was a kid. I knew how they made me feel, I knew how they affected my interactions with other people, I knew how people could change when in the middle of a game. I practiced how to play games, and then I practiced trying to figure out who I could play in which game. Chess, Poker, Clue, Mastermind, and almost a hundred other titles and rules. I knew how to act in the games because of the rules and that gave me structure.

So when I got a job selling and buying the games I practiced, I had learned to observe what people wanted and how they might react to various structures and methods. I didn't tell them what they wanted, I asked what they liked. I didn't tell them what 'the good game' was, I asked what they wanted to get from a game. I didn't know it, but I was applying some of the very methods that were described in this section. But now that I know how others see and view these methods, perhaps I can practice them better.

Applications - Effective Meetings (2/2/10)

Facilitation, as I had just said previously, is difficult. However, it is a role I have often attempted to fill to varying degrees of success in the past. Here are a few of the lessons I feel I will be able to apply to future attempts at effective facilitation.

• Better identify personalities - It's difficult for me to sometimes identify what might be a task oriented personality vs. a forceful destructive personality. By better examining the textbook examples, I think I will better be able to see details better that I may have missed in the past.
• Maintain neutrality better - I'm a passionate person, which is sometimes why I want to facilitate resolutions between other people that have passion. However, I do have a nasty habit of losing my neutrality if the issue gets drawn out for too long. By better managing time on issues better I hope I can manage my ability to remain neutral.
• Check my own personality - I'm not always going to be the facilitator, so I need to remember what I do which might disrupt that process. I may not be directly facilitating, but it is a responsible team member which assists in reducing unneeded work on whomever is taking on that role.

Lessons Learned - Class 7: Facilitation (2/2/10)

Facilitation is difficult. “What? That’s not much of an observation!” OK, fine, so perhaps the matter is a bit more complex than that one sentence, but it does sum up what I’m going to go into.

The process of remaining both goal oriented as well as critically neutral is a balancing act that not everyone is cut out for. It takes a level of multitasking and attention to detail that is often applied to analytical thinkers, but the ability to gain insight to personalities and drives that comes from someone with specially suited empathy. While it is certainly not unheard of to have both of these traits gained naturally over the course of life experiences, it is not commonly found without (I feel) certain specialized training.

Now, even once you have a facilitator, there are still a number of obstacles that can stand in the way of the team and their goal. Despite what the textbook says about eliminating chronic problems from a team, this is not always a solution that is available to facilitators and leaders. Then there are the situations where a facilitator may not have the respect or trust of team members that offer critical aspects to the cause.

Facilitation is difficult, and often thankless. It’s a skill that is often valuable when others get credit for successful results and might often be blamed when matters end in failure. But it is still a skill and a practice that is critical to not only business, but also life.