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Get Out of Control to Be Inspirational

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The more we control and plan our thoughts and actions the less inspirational we become.
Control is today an addiction, one of endless ‘to do’ lists, daily planners, heftily edited and careful language.
The rise and rise of the bullet point, has been the death of a flowing and compelling narrative.
It does not serve us. It convinces no one.
The compelling connections by word of mouth, or on the page come when we drop our guard, and trust.

The trick is that the uncontrolled must come from a place of heart, love and service.
Otherwise it will be shapeless drivel.
I know many people fear a lack of control in their communication will be a mess and ramble, disconnected.
But trust me, the most inspirational words I have ever heard were born in moments where there was no control, where the unconscious was unguarded, not stilted, planned or contrived.
The most viral You Tube clips are those moments, when human nature prevailed, and people let themselves get out of control.

Google any inspirational quote and you can be assured they came from an uncontrolled moment. 

Watch and Listen. Capture those moments of inspiration. They are the window to your soul, and will always powerfully connect with others.

The Story of the Science of Remembering

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There’s a classic Greek Tragedy behind the history of mnemonics, the method for setting up patterns to remember things.

The story goes that  around 500BC a Greek poet, Simonides was celebrating a victory with a renowned nobleman. He had just stepped out of the building where the celebrations were being held when it collapsed killing many of the revelers.
Simonides was able to recall the position of each person who had been in the building so they could be identified for burial. His system to use the location of each person as a memory aid founded the system of mnemonics.
Today, the world’s great memory experts still use this system, now known as a Memory Palace, to build a pattern based on locations and images, to remember sequences of facts, figures or any piece of information.  The memoriser simply  ‘walks’ through these loci and commits an item to each one by forming an image between the item and any distinguishing feature of that locus.
This system is also called the Method of Loci or the Journey Method. It is so effective as it lights up a number of areas of the brain that enable us to remember.

Stories do the same thing. In fact, you could say that great stories are simply different forms of a memory palace, where a pattern is set up for a series of happenings from our life and experiences.
There is both an art and a science both to memorizing things and using stories to convey information.

In today’s media and information saturated world, embedding and remembering what we need to know to navigate our work, our goals and our lives is the key to success.

Hope Must Always Be Backed By Endeavour

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Communication that sticks is what we all want.  

What creates a stand out piece of communication? We all hope to be heard, but do we put in an effort to connect?
For me it always starts with the spoken word.
I was listening to a BBC radio broadcast this week at the World Economic Forum with the renowned Nobel Peace Prize winner,  Aung San Suu Kyi among the speakers.  
She spoke with immense wisdom, but also with clear confident statements that came from her mind, her heart and her soul combined. Well that was sure how it sounded. She said things like “We should not fear transparency, we should face it.” Referring to the modern media and social media world.  
She pulled up a journalist who asked her about levels of trust and ‘dark elements’ in Burma.  She said she was interested in trust, but found talk of ‘dark elements’ melodramatic.  There was a powerful intent in the way she spoke. She was highly present to language, its impact and its framing. Every word was well chosen, yet occurred as spontaneous, and human.  I was moved by her powerful, practical leadership: clear, compassionate, and compelling.
She was embedding her messages deeply.  So much so that I easily recall them from memory three days later.  She left a lasting impression with me.
She spoke of her willingness to become the President of Burma, but said it must change its constitution to allow her to do this. She said:

 “ I have always said that hope must be backed up by endeavour.”

This wisdom goes for life in general,  wishful thinking can only become wish fulfillment with action.

Marble Your Story With Fat

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Low fat diets and communication that cuts to the quick have something in common.

There is no contrast, no light and dark. They become unhealthily sanitised.

There’s a danger in the promotion of ‘low fat’ language and communication that is reduced down to sparse detail that  the essence is lost; the black and white, the yin and yang  the dark and light of what has communication become compelling.
The fat of marbled meat adds something to the overall cut. The fat tempers it.
The right fat is good for you.
A little bit of fat marbled through our communication offers contrast, and activates the lean stuff.  In the delivery of the spoken word, the fat might be an um or an ah, a stumble or a hesitation.  When I edit sound tracks of people I don’t take out every breathe and every umm. I might reduced them, but some are critical to the flow of the speaker.  I do this by feel and by a rhythm.
So too with the written word and all forms of communication. It is the paradox, the fallibility of people that is part of their compelling story.
It is the contrast and the journey that makes a story leap off the page.
It is the authenticity of it.
Too clean, too sterile, too rehearsed, and there is no life.
There is life in the gristle and the fat of life as much as the lean mean machines.
Fat is seen as bad, to be cut off and discarded.
A story or communication reduced and spun, discards anything potentially untoward, or anything that could be perceived as negative, or showing an individual, an event or an organisation in a bad light.
But it is the dark as well as the lightthat gives a story contrast.

The fat activates the lean, and becomes one greater whole.

Keeping it Real Makes Stuff Stick

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I was helping a 15 year old niece with her homework. She said: “What is the point of learning history if I can just google it all on my phone? Same with maths. Waste of time.”
We were doing a history assignment (oops sorry she kept correcting me it was an ‘assessment’) about the Gallipoli campaign during the First World War where many New Zealanders and Australians died.
She was just ‘not’ engaged, and the Facebook and text interruptions just kept coming, in her world far more engaging and relevant that stats and info about a war many, many years ago.
The exercise was to learn how to use multiple sources, write bibliographies etc.
It was hard going,  yep, actually boring, and I was struggling to convince her about the value of the project.
Then as we got to some photo resources, my young friend was really moved by the commemorative wall covered in the names of those who had died. She said it made her emotional. She had seen the wall on a field trip to the War Memorial Museum.
Here it finally made some sense. She became engaged in the whole project.

One question in the assessment was about why remembering the event was important today. She had the answer from her personal experience.
So how often do we miss the heart connection in pieces of work?
The connection here shifted the chore and grind of doing something that did not seem relevant to something that clearly made sense in her world today.
The very best teachers engage hearts and minds, when they have the time and support to do so.
But I wonder how often this is the exception rather than the rule?
We ended up having a good time with this piece of work, learning about the objectivity and point of choosing and comparing multiple sources ( so easy Not to do with Google at your finger tips these days) and bringing a piece of history to life.
The key is to start with a connection, clear about Why, and then the rest of learning, even the hard yards, falls into place.

If You Love Your Brand Set It Free

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When I used to work in a corporate management role we used to joke about having to be the brand police.
It was a time when access to computers meant people could use clip art, and various pieces of software to tinker around with the organisation’s brand.
They would embellish it here and there for their project or piece of work.
It drove the brand managers nuts.
And for those that liked to tinker, they saw those managers as control freaks, soul-less corporate leaders who were the equivalent of ‘thought police’ dictating templates, logo placement and the way the brand was articulate.
That was the early 2000s. We’ve all moved on aeons since then, even though it is just a decade, a blip in time.
But you know, I think this issue is still alive.
How do you ensure your brand is consistent? But at the same time enable your people, your staff , your employees to contribute to it?
Smart organisations are getting their head around this.
They engage with employees, and have them reflect the brand creatively through their stories and experiences.  But to be clear, they are NOT saying: Help yourself to the logo, the vision, the business strategies. They are ensuring that their vision and brand has depth, so that everyone can see themselves reflected in it. But they ARE saying
Visions and brands that are built on powerful metaphors do that.
It is all about strategy articulation and strategy execution.
To be articulated well  a strategy has to be inclusive. You cannot silo the organisations stories to the PR and Marketing department and the executive team.
Everyone has a story to tell.
And those stories have to be about the challenges as well as the wins. No Spin. No gloom and doom. Telling it like it is.

The Power of Community and Story at Times of Death

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A friend of mine died suddenly the other day.
He had a condition that could always be life threatening, but his death was sudden and took everyone by surprise.
His condition had always made him grouchy and hard to get on with. He got into rows with many people.
But his wake (tangi) and funeral was full of rich and loving stories about him and his life, his eccentricities, his passions, and his prickliness.
The beautiful thing about the celebration of his life was how it brought together three communities as one; the local townspeople where he lived, a football club, his church, his home and caregivers and friends from a Trust (community) caring for people with disability. 
All had not been under the same roof at the same time before.
Many stories were told, they were honest and humble.
The glue was the stories. Some short and poignant. Some barely articulate. Some were poetry. But they all painted a picture, warts and all.
For someone who could alienate people so easily, it was moving to see a church filled with people. It was three thriving communities coming together.
It has reminded me of the power of those two pillars of humanity; community and story.

Real Connections at the Coalface

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Community Space trumps Work Place 

The last few weeks I have been immersed in a community.
It has been a radical change from my ‘day job’ of the last 15 odd years, where I have been in the privileged world of the professional, of the consultant.
I am working with a community of people with intellectual disability. They are old friends I have kept in touch with for 20 odd years.
The Trust had a management meltdown so I joined two others to help run the place, caring for 30 or so people in 8 houses.
Oh my goodness, people at the coalface of community in social services work hard. They work so very, very hard. And the astounding thing is that they are doing this for a mere pittance of what I earn in the commercial world.
The divide is unbelievable.
And what strikes me is how multi-skilled they are. Today government funders and agencies require piles and piles of paperwork. There are templates and forms for everything. The bookcases in the lounges of the community houses are packed with bulging folders of forms and templates. There are endless audits, quality assurance checks.
So the community workers become accountants, doctors, nurses, social workers, psychiatrists, home handymen and women, nutritionists, health and safety experts. All on a minimum wage.
Meanwhile tiers and tiers of ‘managers’ and policy analysts and others that form the government agencies that fund the service are required to have a far more narrow set of skills, and are paid four or five times or more the rate of those at the coal face.
There is something very wrong with this scenario. We have created and perpetuated it through our education systems. Having worked in tertiary education I have witnessed the machine that produces young people with salary expectations that have them end up in these tiers and tiers of ‘managers.’
It is rare to find a tertiary graduate willing to roll their sleeves up.
But for those that do, the rewards and fulfillment is huge.
We hear so much about the need today for connection and engagement in our work places. Spending time in the community at the coalface creates connection like nothing else.

Why Trumps All the Other Ws in Story

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One word, one question is the most important starting point for any story.
Why? 
It can be a real challenge to answer.
Young children love to pose this question as they seek out meaning to the world around them. They make you stop and think.  Why is the sky blue? Why is God? Why are there flowers on that plant?  Why? Why and Why, until you are exhausted, or simply don’t have an answer.
There is no shortage of stories all around us every day.  We can hear, them, share them often without stopping to think why we are telling them, and even if they are true. They will often tell as What, When, Where, but the Why is not always clear.
Thinking about the Why in every story is also about your intention in telling it. 
What are you creating with the telling of the story? Are you trying to convince others of your point of view? What is in it for those who are receiving your story? What are you creating with it?
 In New York there is an organisation called Children at the Well. 
It is for children of different faiths to come together and share their stories.
So the Why for these children is very clear. They are interested in something that many people joke about, dream about, or believe is impossible.World Peace. 
They want to know and share their stories, regardless of faith or background. They seek connection and understanding.
Right now, as adults are killing children in religious conflicts in the Middle East, who is stopping to ask Why.
If you put together a group of  children from Israel, from Syria, from Gaza from differing faiths, what sort of stories might they share?  What would the Why be in the stories that they might share?

Story and The Common Touch

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It is a great accolade to say a leader has a ‘common touch.” But what does that mean?

It has a lot to do with connecting with people at a very human level, heart, mind and soul, talking about life as it occurs for us all every day.
Touch is a very powerful sense for all of us. To be ‘touched’ is to be moved, affected and influenced powerfully. Physical touch is a hugely powerful connection between two people.
Common is something shared.
A powerful story shared by someone in a leadership role demonstrates a common touch.
The key is that the story is shared in service of others, without the ego driving it.
A leader with a ‘common touch’ sharing stories will be perceived as someone who other’s interests at heart rather than their own.
The critical element is that it is a story shared, a story with depth and breadth that it has widespread appeal whatever walk of life someone is on.
They are the stories that go viral and that we remember. We all share our humanity in common.
The stories I remember from great leaders are always about their flaws as well as their brilliance, they are real, they are authentic and I can see myself reflected in what they are saying.
I’ll go yeah, I know how that feels. I can relate to that.
And that is the ‘common touch.’
Here are three tips to develop a common touch.
  • Think of  a mistake you have made, and what you learnt, and how you would tell it as a story.
  • Think of a time you were totally surprised by someone and what they told you.  In particular, recall when you made an assumption about someone and were proved wrong.
  • Think of a time when you received extraordinary service from someone, and describe how that occurred. Especially an occasion when you were not expecting it. This is very effective if it is related to a common chore that most people experience, like buying something, making a phone call, being assisted with a task.