The Positive Runs Out

This afternoon, I recorded a webinar on employee motivation techniques. During the webinar, I discussed a model of human behavior that helps to explain why people do what they do. The main learning point from this model is that people generally do what they do because of what they expect to happen after they do it. After the webinar, I was speaking with my friend and colleague Kevin Eikenberry. We discussed the webinar, and, as we spoke, I remembered an event from a training class I lead on this... [Read more]

How To Get People To Do What You Want

This week, I have lead two-days of Bud To Boss training and participated on two expert panel discussions at a major trade show. All week, I have been sharing my thoughts and insights on communication skills, motivation theory, leadership, team-building, and persuasion. The thought behind much (not all) of what I was asked in my role as seminar leader and expert panelist basically reduced to this: How do I get people to do what I want them to do. My short answer: you don’t. People do what they... [Read more]

Get Over Yourself To Develop Effective Communication Skills

Recently, I have been frustrated in a number of conversations when the person I was speaking with asked me a question and then interrupted or hijacked the conversation before I finished my answer. Every time I reached a comma in my thought, they heard a period. As a result, they misinterpreted my message, started speaking, and took off in a conversational direction that left me wondering if we were in the same conversation. I didn’t say anything at the time. Other people were around, and it... [Read more]

Getting What You Want With Gentle Persistence

My brother and I have pretty well mastered the art of getting what we want from the humans we adopted. They’re pretty nice people, but they don’t always understand us immediately. So, we have learned to sit patiently at the back door and look at them until they realize that we want to come in the house. We Got What We Wanted We have found that this approach works much better that making lots of noise and insisting that they let us inside. In fact, when we make too much noise, they generally... [Read more]

Communicating About Change – Connect With Emotions

Today, we had our monthly Group Coaching call for Silver Remarkable Leadership Learning System members. Using the handout from this month’s Remarkable Leadership teleseminar as a discussion guide, we talked about some really powerful concepts related to communicating change. This is one of the many ideas we discussed: Change can be driven by facts, but people are driven by emotions. As we discussed this observation, we spoke about the importance of connecting with the emotional response that... [Read more]

Conflict Resolution Tips: Task Oriented People with People Oriented Individuals

I often use the DISC Model of Human Behavior as a tool in my training sessions. One of the key ideas to draw from the model is that about 35% of people are more task oriented and about 65% of people are more people oriented. Task oriented people tend to focus on the task at hand even in the presence of other people. They often view everything as a task. Sometimes, they even view relationships as a task or a project. People oriented individuals tend to focus on relationships and people ahead of... [Read more]