Mistaken or not, how easy to see that over 2000 years ago 3 royal scholars/astrologers/scientists would have been compelled to see what such a vision pointed to.

In a world of an imploding America, and Arab Spring that still cracks hearts and sidewalks, and a Europe at the edge of its biggest challenge since the second world war, how does one not seek a guiding star?

The great unifying visions of the human race have lead to so much suffering. Having found our star, or our interpretation of that star’s . . . → Read More: We Could Use an Orient Star]]> Share/Bookmark

Comet Lovejoy - Lester Barnes

Prima Facie

Mistaken or not, how easy to see that over 2000 years ago 3 royal scholars/astrologers/scientists would have been compelled to see what such a vision pointed to.

In a world of an imploding America, and Arab Spring that still cracks hearts and sidewalks, and a Europe at the edge of its biggest challenge since the second world war, how does one not seek a guiding star?

Verso

The great unifying visions of the human race have lead to so much suffering. Having found our star, or our interpretation of that star’s message, it seems our next instinct is to define those who experience the vision differently as ‘other’. And the enemy.

Hundreds of thousands of years of defining and protecting our species, our tribes, villages, clans, and families, have lead to first coagulate and calcify the story of the vision, and then violently defend that story against all others who saw it differently.

If there is a moral arrow, and I believe there is, then will the day come when we experience a vision like this, and then instinctively weave the creation of its story into something entirely new?

We will know that story is entirely new and entirely right when it clearly undergoes two transformations: it atomizes and becomes a singularly unique story for each and every soul that absorbs it, providing 360 degrees of orientation; those millions of perspectives all reconnect instead of splintering and dividing, providing a truly universal story of healing and new direction.

Utterly utopian, I know.

I’ll keep my eye on the evening sky.

Check out Google. Enter the search term “communication”, and click on the “Images” search tab. Count the number of ears that are featured as opposed to mouths, megaphones, speakers, etc. We say “I’m all ears…” but you wouldn’t know it from the walk we walk. It’s all talk! It . . . → Read More: The Ears Have It]]> Share/Bookmark

Lend me your ears

When Shakespeare penned the words “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears…” in Julius Caesar he did his share to perpetuate the tradition that confuses great oratory with great communication. That tradition has done more to damage our understanding of good communication than almost anything else.

Check out Google. Enter the search term “communication”, and click on the “Images” search tab. Count the number of ears that are featured as opposed to mouths, megaphones, speakers, etc. We say “I’m all ears…” but you wouldn’t know it from the walk we walk. It’s all talk! It should be “I’m all mouths!”

Let’s turn that on its ear.

Meaning begins with listening

Great communication always starts with listening, not speaking.

Meaning is a value ascribed to incoming data by the listener. You can have the most polished speech, the cleverest PowerPoint slides, the latest technology broadcasting the newest numbers, but if your listeners don’t find value in what you are broadcasting, it’s just noise.

So how do you shape your message so that your audience hears it as information; as a communication they value? As you prepare your ad campaign, keynote speech, or blog content, how can you ensure you will be heard?

You start by listening. Begin by finding out what your audience values; what would make them tune in and turn on.

Here are 4 questions you can ask before you put your message together:

1. Who is your listener as a person? The most effective communication always has an emotional thread. By getting to know how your audience feels about your topic, and about their world in general, you will be more likely to strike the right emotional chords and have your message resonate more deeply. Even the largest audience consists of individual human beings. Get to know them.
2. What are their needs and desires? This is basic market research. Everyone in your audience wants something. If you can hitch your message to those desires you will have their full attention.
3. What keeps them up at night? As well as desires, we all have fears. While this aspect of understanding audiences has a very dark history (just think of the history of  how popular fears framed as anti-Semitism and racism have been fanned into holocausts in the last 150 years), it remains critical to know what problems and stresses your audience is dealing with. All successful business messages connect because they promise to solve someone’s problem.
4. Can you share the ride? Sometimes it makes sense to share a cab ride with someone if you are both headed in the same direction. In business communication, you can get a lot of mileage by finding out where your audience is headed (or would like to go) and connecting their journey with yours.

All communication is an act of translation. It’s like speaking in a foreign country: it doesn’t matter how articulate you are in your language, if you don’t understand your audience’s language, and translate your message accordingly, your audience will be hearing gibberish.

I help businesses and organizations get the mix right. People and systems working together to produce remarkable results. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.

There’s more! Looking for success in your small business? Read my Small Business blog at Small Business Fundamentals (www.smbfundamentals.com).

Too shy to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!

You want the wheels on your car aligned. When the wheels are even a little bit out of alignment, the ride is uncomfortable, the wear on tires and other parts goes up, and the vehicle works less efficiently. When the wheels are critically out of alignment the ride is unbearable, and your safety is at risk.

When things that matter in your business and your life are not in alignment:

The next time you are onboarding a new recruit, here’s a little improvisation I would like you to undertake. The rules:

What are you selling?

If nothing, then you are not in business. If only commodities, then you won’t be in business for long.

“But wait,” you say “I am a service provider. I don’t sell commodities. So I guess I’m safe.”

Sorry. A service alone is still a commodity. In the brave new world of social business, anything is a commodity to the extent to which it is a) a transaction that consists only of the exchange of a good or service for money, and b) reproducible in every important way.

So a service which is repeated over . . . → Read More: The Social Market: Relationships, Stories, and Desire]]> Share/Bookmark

What are you selling?

If nothing, then you are not in business. If only commodities, then you won’t be in business for long.

“But wait,” you say “I am a service provider. I don’t sell commodities. So I guess I’m safe.”

Sorry. A service alone is still a commodity. In the brave new world of social business, anything is a commodity to the extent to which it is a) a transaction that consists only of the exchange of a good or service for money, and b) reproducible in every important way.

So a service which is repeated over and over again, where the narrative arc ends completely when money changes hands, and which can be replicated by any competent professional the world over, is a commodity. And commodities have no place in the social marketplace.

The antonym of ‘commodity’ in this paradigm, is ‘experience’.

An experience in the context of social business, begins before the customer comes into direct contact with the business, and lasts long after the core transaction has taken place. And each experience is unique.

An experience is the product of a unique interaction between equal players. In the social market, the focus is on the unique relationship between the buyer, the seller, and the environment. That particular relationship cannot be reproduced and is becoming the new USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Social tools, especially those focusing on place (like FourSquare or Facebook Places) create the opportunity to customize interactions for both the buyer and the seller.

An experience is a story. The traditional models of acquisition and retention are losing their definition. Through digital social channels, we become aware of brands long before we click a link or walk through their doors. We are made aware of them through the conversations of those we trust, through targeted ads, and through the directed stream of data that flows around us. Sites like TripAdvisor, Yelp, and the shaped offerings and reviews from sites like Amazon provide a near-global conversation about brands, which those brands can participate in, but not control. At mid-transaction, the story continues as business and consumer exchange information, and successful businesses attempt to create a remarkable experience with each visit or purchase. Then after the sale, the digital threads connecting consumer and business remain sticky and elastic. Follow-up, follow-through, return-incentives, and CRM all lose their distinct post-purchase roles and flow backwards and forwards to sustain the relationship and the experience of the brand for as long as possible.

In the social market, desire becomes more nuanced. In 20th century marketing, brands would try to speak to our desires for acceptance, status, fulfillment. But the whole experience had a tawdry one-night-stand feel to it. As soon as you purchased that object of desire: the house, the nicer car, the bigger TV, something akin to post-coital depression set in until the credit-fueled dance of desire started again, focused on a new fetish. In the social market, the seductions still continue, but there is nuance and a deeper commitment. Apple probably understands this better than any other brand. The combination of beautiful objects and a tribal-cliquey sense of being part of a special community is masterfully handled by Apple. Our desires remain, and brands will still seek to fulfill them, but the pace must be slower. The nature of the fulfillment must be richer. As Apple knows, it can’t just be about stuff any more. And I think it is just the beginning. There are deeper and more subtle desires that brands can connect with and act as partners in fulfilling: the sense of belonging, the sense of making a real difference in our communities and globally, a spiritual dimension… In my memory, the Body Shop perhaps best understood and exploited (not necessarily in a bad sense) this. But they were before their time. Lululemon is close. But there will be many more: successful businesses will find ways to act as partners in shared stories that address our needs and desires, and weave together the social, the commercial, the emotional and spiritual into extended, and profitable, shared experiences.

The experience must be truthful. If there is one thing for which tolerance is evaporating rapidly, it is deception in the market. And sustainable relationships and real experiences cannot be built on lies. It will be interesting to watch as the marketing, PR, and branding universe adjusts to the truth that whatever else consumers will demand, it is… the truth. Punishment for deception will be swift and many times fatal, as the social networks (including many of the consumer rating sites like TripAdvisor or Yelp mentioned above) spread bad news at a speed with a reach we have not seen before.

I help organizations improve communication through leadership & management-level workshops & coaching. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.

There’s more! Looking for success in your small business? Read my Small Business blog at Small Business Fundamentals (www.smbfundamentals.com).

Too shy to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!

Business Fundamentals.

Rules.

Each of these disciplines have rules at the heart of them.

So why do I find myself constantly going back there to think and act out of the box? Isn’t getting out of the box, out of the rut, all about breaking the old rules?

No. This is a complete failure of insight. We are not boxed by rules. We are boxed by habits, instincts, and unexamined emotions. One prejudice creates a prison of a box more . . . → Read More: Back to the Middle to Get Outside]]> Share/Bookmark

Information theory. Physics. Classical music & jazz. Monastic orders. The sciences of the brain and cognition. Statistics and probability.

Business Fundamentals.

Rules.

Each of these disciplines have rules at the heart of them.

So why do I find myself constantly going back there to think and act out of the box? Isn’t getting out of the box, out of the rut, all about breaking the old rules?

No. This is a complete failure of insight. We are not boxed by rules. We are boxed by habits, instincts, and unexamined emotions. One prejudice creates a prison of a box more secure than all the laws of physics combined.

Despite the popular conception that the ‘box’ is the world of rules, order and structure, it is the opposite. The box is our emotions, instincts, and habits… all the stuff we are supposed to ‘get in touch with’ to get out of the box. It is a box of comfort. The box is not really a box at all. It is a groove, a deep groove of habits of thought and actions, made deep by our going over the same ground again and again.

The best way to get out of the box is a reality check. A real-ity check: a return to the world prior to, and impervious to, our assumptions and prejudices.

This is why even a cursory understanding of the laws of thermodynamics or probability trumps ‘common sense’. This is why learning to read a statement of cash flows is more valuable than reading one more woowoo pop psychology The Secret of Blah Blah Blah Success book. This is why understanding that you multiply two unrelated probabilities (for example the probability that you will have an opening for an employee next month, and the probability that some great talent will walk through your door looking for a job), that you don’t add them, is more valuable than clinging to the law of attraction. It is why understanding the Pareto distribution is more powerful and freeing than $1000′s in inspirational speakers.

The next time someone says: “we need think outside the box,” notice what happens next. If it is some kind of pseudo-brainstorm group-think  exercise, or even worse, the not-laws of The Secret, then all you are going to get is new layers of crud built on old layers of crud. In a weird MC Escher-like journey you will think you are making forward progress, when you will only find yourself exactly back where you started… less the energy you had when you started (check out the laws of thermodynamics for why that happens).

On the other hand, if the “getting out of the box” exercise begins with someone reaching for a giant scraper, to scrape away the layers of unexamined assumptions and habits, while saying something like “Let’s get back to fundamentals and rebuild,” then you know you have a hope of getting out of that box.

 Want to improve your communication with employees, partners, and customers? I help organizations improve communication through leadership & management-level workshops & coaching. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.

There’s more! Looking for success in your small business? Read my Small Business blog at Small Business Fundamentals (www.smbfundamentals.com).

Too shy to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!

In music we keep going back to the fundamentals over and over again. You keep practicing all the time. Inspiration and creativity matter, but if you are a professional, it is your chops that really matter. No one expects to get it right the first time. You make mistakes, but you keep practicing until you don’t make mistakes any more. Yes originality . . . → Read More: Play it Again. And Again. And Again.]]> Share/Bookmark

Ideas are easy. Consistency is hard.

I think that one of the reasons I return to that epigram so often is because of my music training. The business world has much to learn from the musical world.

In music we keep going back to the fundamentals over and over again. You keep practicing all the time. Inspiration and creativity matter, but if you are a professional, it is your chops that really matter. No one expects to get it right the first time. You make mistakes, but you keep practicing until you don’t make mistakes any more. Yes originality matters, but at least in the worlds of jazz and classical music, you won’t get a lick if you can’t perform.

I heard an interview with Paul Simon a few weeks ago. Simon made a comment about having some great material in his head for another recording, but he had put it all on hold because he was on tour now. The interviewer asked, clearly perplexed, if that meant he just stopped writing, if he just put his creativity on hold. Simon response was that he was a professional. He didn’t sit around waiting for inspiration. He had a job to do, and when it came time to write, he would write.

Paul Simon has, among a crazy wealth of other abilities, solid writing chops. It is his craft, and he practices it.

That’s the way it is. So close your copy of 10 New Laws of Success I Just Discovered or any book with the words new, secret, laws, or success in the title, and start acting like a musician.

Practice your Craft

Business is an art and a craft. Practice it. Learn the fundamental rules of finance, social sciences/psychology, operations & logistics, communication and information theory. Understand the real laws of cause and effect that are the constants of your world much as the laws of acoustics, theory, and rhythm are the constants of a musician’s world. Study, study, study.

Then then practice. Practice, practice, practice. There are no shortcuts, no magical ‘laws’, no real silver bullets. The 10,000 hours that Gladwell writes about in Outliers won’t be ignored. Honour them or you will get nowhere.

Do you have to love what you do? Of course. Who wants to do something for ten thousand hours that they don’t love? But if you want to excel at it, if you want to make a living at it, it becomes a labour of love. The love must come first, but the system, the labour, the practice cannot be ignored. And if you want to be successful as a business owner, it is the practice of business that you must focus on. Not what got you into the business: baking or sales or mechanics or construction. The business itself is now your craft.

In music school, I spent 1,000’s of hours in study cubicles and Wenger practice studios. In the cubicles we were mastering the theoretical fundamentals of our art. In the tiny practice modules we were all practicing the performance of that art. And in the middle of all those hours, what struck me was not how hard I was working, it was what I heard when I took a break in the common area: the sounds of pianos, voices, trombones, trumpets, violins, double basses, percussion… heard faintly through the almost-soundproof doors of the other Wenger studios. The same scales, the same passages, the same failures and triumphs over and over and over again. The relentless patterns of the search for mastery.

I just don’t hear enough of that in the world of business.

 Want to improve your communication with employees, partners, and customers? I help organizations improve communication through leadership & management-level workshops & coaching. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.

There’s more! Looking for success in your small business? Read my Small Business blog at Small Business Fundamentals (www.smbfundamentals.com).

Too shy to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!

When was the last time you put off eating that ice cream because it was too much bother? How about finding all kinds of excuses not to cash in that cheque for 10K.

No?

How many of us pack the car in a flurry to hit the road and get to that fishing or camping spot before everyone else? Gardeners getting lost for hours in their gardens? Those of us who love to cook, unwinding in our kitchens, cooking 4-course meals?

Where are the procrastinators?

Every time I work . . . → Read More: There are No Procrastinators]]> Share/Bookmark

We all procrastinate. But most of us are not procrastinators.

When was the last time you put off eating that ice cream because it was too much bother? How about finding all kinds of excuses not to cash in that cheque for 10K.

No?

How many of us pack the car in a flurry to hit the road and get to that fishing or camping spot before everyone else? Gardeners getting lost for hours in their gardens? Those of us who love to cook, unwinding in our kitchens, cooking 4-course meals?

Where are the procrastinators?

Every time I work with a client to find out why they consistently avoid certain tasks, we dig through a layer of self-accusations about laziness and procrastination. But as I point out to them, that makes no sense. They are working 10 hour days, 6 days a week. They have built a business and put kids through college. Where does the lazy fit in?

No, it’s not about lazy. It’s about avoiding stuff you are not good at, and not meant to do.

One of the most important jobs you have as a business owner is to work your way out of your business one unpleasant task at a time. From bookkeeping to answering the phones, from sales to hand-holding employees. There are a myriad of things in a small business that must be done, but you may not like doing them. And when we don’t like what we are doing, we don’t do the job as well as someone who loves it.

If building a great team is the #1 critical success factor, then the list of things you hate to do can form a checklist of whom to hire first.

Growing a business is not just about increasing revenues and profits, or about bragging rights, or security (though all 3 of those things are fun or valuable), it is also about getting it to that place where you don’t have a single day of procrastination.

Many of us started our businesses because we loved doing one thing: painting, wrenching, baking, building, helping, healing… Then we realized that running a business doing those things involved doing so many other things we weren’t good at and didn’t like. So we need to grow to get back to that place. Not the same activity necessarily (I know lots of business owners who started a business for one reason, but fell in love with a different aspect of it later) but back to that place of loving what you do every day.

You are not a procrastinator, you are just ignoring reminders to keep growing back to that place where every morning, work can’t start soon enough.

 Want to improve your communication with employees, partners, and customers? I help organizations improve communication through leadership & management-level workshops & coaching. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.

There’s more! Looking for success in your small business? Read my Small Business blog at Small Business Fundamentals (www.smbfundamentals.com).

Don’t want to leave a comment? That’s cool. +1′s and tweets are appreciated too!

So really, are we too busy? Too distracted? Have we lost something important that we once had?

Reading What Happened To Downtime? The Extinction Of . . . → Read More: Give it a Rest. Downtime and Productivity]]> Share/Bookmark

It has become a truism that many of us are too busy.

My trouble is that every time I hear a pronouncement like that I feel my feet cleaving and two little bumps pushing through my skull just at the hairline. The urge to advocate for the devil becomes strong.  For example, when I hear someone say we should all be seeking balance in our lives I get like that… but that’s another article.

So really, are we too busy? Too distracted? Have we lost something important that we once had?

Reading What Happened To Downtime? The Extinction Of Deep Thinking And Sacred Space on Fast Company reminded me of this important question.

In this case the answer (unlike the persistent question about balance) is yes. We are losing something. The loss is measurable, as are the impacts.

Especially as managers and leaders we need time to think. And not just any time. Time where we are free for an uninterrupted period of time to think without a particular goal or objective.

Reflections on Thinking Time

• Interruptions cost. There is a growing body of evidence that shows that every time we are interrupted in a task, the brain requires 10 to 20 times the length of the interruption to recover. So when someone bugs you for “just a minute” they are actually costing you at least 10 minutes of productive time. And that multiplier gets larger as we get older.
• The more you direct your brain, the less real problem solving it can do. The best way to approach a complex problem is to spend a significant amount of time studying it and then walking away. I would say “put it out of your mind” but that is actually the opposite of what really happens. When we really focus on a problem we are using certain parts of our brain. When you let go of the problem, it doesn’t go out of your mind at all; it sinks deeper. Now the rest of the brain can do its job without you micromanaging it. Sleep on it, go for a run, take a long shower, meditate, do something where your mind can wander. There is a famous story of August Kekulé and his discovery of structure of the benzene molecule. After enormous amounts of research and thought, the solution occurred to Kekulé as he was daydreaming. The image of a snake with its tail in its mouth passed through Kekulé’s mind and he realized in that moment that the solution he had been seeking was a ring structure. Kekulé was not in his lab when this solution occurred to him, he was riding a horse-drawn omnibus.
• You really can’t be on all the time. Not only is it not a good idea, you literally can’t. There is a lot of evidence that shows that the brain, especially in its executive functioning (that’s the decision-making stuff that goes on largely at the front of the brain), has limited resources. The longer you hammer away at a problem, the more you reduce your brain’s capacity to solve any problem at all. That is not to say that extended periods of focused thinking is not productive. Given enough rest (including mental rest, or as we like to call it ‘spacing out’) we can work at a problem for quite a long time. But if you try to do that for one problem after another, making tough decisions all day long, the quality of those decisions will deteriorate. Throw in fatigue and interruptions, and you can see where this is going.

Find Space to Think

As a leader or a manager, you owe it to your organization and your team to make the best decisions you can. How do you do that? Here are six tips:

1. Set aside time each day to think. Put it right in your calendar. This is not a ‘left over’ activity to cram in spaces after other things are done. Even 20 minutes a day can make a difference. Go for a walk. Close the door to your office. Head to a local coffee shop. Put your work down, and get out of your normal work space.
2. Turn off digital distractions. You can’t always stop people from interrupting you. But email inbox bells, smartphone bleeps, social media alerts… all of those can be turned off.
3. Sleep. Get as close to eight hours as you can. Don’t be afraid to nap when the opportunity presents itself.
4. Drive in silence. I love listening to the CBC or to audio books on my longer drives to meet with clients. But I also enjoy driving in silence. Often I will even turn my Bluetooth earpiece off.  Some of my best thinking time happens in the car when nothing can distract me.
5. Walk or run. Centuries of common practice, especially in monastic traditions, have taught the value of walking meditation or walking prayer. There is something about the rhythm, the passing landscape, the absence of interruptions, that engenders that deep, undirected and creative thinking like nothing else. Of the three places I think the best: shower, car, and walks or runs, it is the latter that are the best. My only challenge sometimes, is to retain a good idea until I get home!
6. Sometimes technology helps.While one of the biggest culprits in the creation of “thought, interrupted” is digital technology, I sometimes find it a great ally. I use the voice recorder on my phone a lot. I have written before that my favourite tool to use in recording ideas and conversations is my Moleskine notebook.  But when you are stopped at a stoplight or walking through the city, you can’t always take out your notebook and write down an idea. I push a button, record my idea, and let it go. Not only does this help me capture the ideas that might otherwise evaporate, it allows my mind to keep wandering because I am not stressing about forgetting the thought I just had.

Want to improve your communication with employees, partners, and customers? I help organizations improve communication through leadership & management-level workshops & coaching. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.

There’s more! Looking for success in your small business? Read my Small Business blog at Small Business Fundamentals (www.smbfundamentals.com).

We’ve all heard the stories so many times we’ve kind of come to expect them: the stories of celebrities who seem to have everything until the mask slips. Then they seem to have nothing.

Alcoholism, addictions, emptiness, abuse, loneliness, issues with debt, self-esteem, shattered families.

Yet even though we know all that, we still too often find ourselves in a new environment, surrounded by seemingly successful people, feeling a serious case of ‘imposter syndrome’ coming on. Why do we do that? Why do we understand the pains and struggles of our own journeys, and the repeated . . . → Read More: It’s Not What it Seems – Finding Your Confidence]]> Share/Bookmark

It’s never what it seems…

We’ve all heard the stories so many times we’ve kind of come to expect them: the stories of celebrities who seem to have everything until the mask slips. Then they seem to have nothing.

Alcoholism, addictions, emptiness, abuse, loneliness, issues with debt, self-esteem, shattered families.

Yet even though we know all that, we still too often find ourselves in a new environment, surrounded by seemingly successful people, feeling a serious case of ‘imposter syndrome’ coming on. Why do we do that? Why do we understand the pains and struggles of our own journeys, and the repeated paparazzi-fueled defrocking of one celebrity emperor after another, and still continue to assume the charismatic, confident looking person in front of us at the networking lunch must really have it all?

We don’t. The celebrities don’t. Why do we assume the person standing in front of us does?

Finding your confidence…

I don’t know why those beliefs in the success of others are so persistent, or why we feel our worth threatened in that way. But I do have 5 things to think about that will help you find that confidence:

1. Show up as yourself. There isn’t anyone else like you. You know what you know. You have seen what you have seen. And unless you have been sleepwalking through the last few decades you have stories and perspectives to share that will always add value to a real conversation. Even your ignorance, when kept in an honest perspective, adds value: you are willing to learn, and others are always willing to teach.
2. Assume nothing. Including the success or confidence of others. Before you walk into the room, or open your mouth, empty your mind of whatever assumptions you have about everyone else and start with a deliberate blank slate. You will be stunned to discover that almost no one is who they appear to be, and as Jeff Hadden wrote in the article that inspired this one: “The playing field is always more level than it seems.”
3. Questions, then silence. We are afraid that if we don’t contribute something we will be seen as uninteresting or of little value in the conversation. The opposite is true. People love being asked intelligent questions, and a good listener is worth 10 great speakers. As I teach in my Improv classes: “Always make the other person look good.” And if that doesn’t work, silence does. Truly confident people don’t feel the need to go on and on. They know what they know and the know who they are. There’s no need to prove anything.
4. Know what you know. This one is a bit of work, but powerful. Lots of us walk around with attitudes, experiences, opinions, and passionate beliefs floating around half-formed or partially articulated in our heads. Having those clearly articulated within ourselves is one of the foundations of confidence. The best way to build that foundation is by writing. Whether it is papers, articles, blogs, or journals and diaries, taking the time to revisit themes that matter to us over and over again frames them and deepens them. Then in conversation, don’t be afraid to weave those ideas and beliefs in wherever appropriate. You don’t have to go on about it (see #3) but you do have to speak those words many times to help them acquire that ring of confidence.
5. The trump card: gratitude. Negativity, sarcasm, and irony are the armour of the insecure. Like listening, gratitude is the sign of someone who has the quiet confidence to pay attention to their surroundings and to make others feel good. You’ve seen it: they may not have said the most at dinner, but they always seemed to have someone speaking to them, and then they were the first with a few warm words of genuine gratitude for their hosts.That warmth and gratitude are always the most attractive thing in the room.

What are the traits you have observed in those you think of as confident? Where are the places you find your own confidence?

Want to improve your communication with employees, partners,and customers? I help organizations improve communication through leadership & management-level workshops & coaching. Check out my website to learn about the different ways I can support your organization.