A Listening Exercise to do Next Time you Watch a Movie

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Leading by listening requires developing two kinds of awareness. There’s self-awareness, which involves getting a handle on personal triggers so you know what sets you off, what makes you pay attention, etc. And then there’s awareness of others, what we like to call “other-awareness” where we learn to observe and interpret the emotions of others so we can wipe out any wrongful assumptions we might otherwise make and just stay focused on the facts.

There are two parts to developing other-awareness. The first is developing our observational skills, which is all about focusing and paying attention, and the second part is interpreting those signals. Now, I’m aware this all sounds amazingly easy: we just pay attention and that gives us more other-awareness… piece of cake, right? The problem is we observe all day long, but we typically don’t pay that much attention to what we’re seeing. Consider, for example, a dime. You’ve handled dimes plenty of times in your life, and you’ve had ample opportunity for observation. But can you really describe a dime? “It’s silver and ridged on the edges,” most of us will say. Fewer will know it’s Franklin D. Roosevelt’s face on a dime. And even fewer will be able to correctly say which direction his profile faces, or what’s written on the back of a dime. This is where other-awareness comes in; it’s keying in and really paying attention and more accurately processing everything that’s going on.

Build other-awareness with this fun exercise 

To build other-awareness, there’s an exercise you can do the next time you watch a movie. The movie just needs to be on DVD or on-demand, any format that allows you to pause and repeat a scene a few times.

Here’s how the exercise works. First, pick a movie (it can be one you’ve seen before, but it’s more fun with a film you’ve never seen) that includes a scene with two or three people interacting. Avoid big action movies, as we’re looking for strong dialogue between human beings. You’re going to watch this scene where people are interacting twice: once with the sound off, and then a second time with the sound on.

The first viewing, with the sound off, you just want to observe. What are the people on screen doing? Without any sound to help you out, try and key into what is happening with these characters. Check out their facial expressions: are they smiling, staring, frowning, eyebrows raised, blinking rapidly? Are they breaking eye contact or are they holding eye contact? What’s happening to the color of their faces? Is one person’s face suddenly getting red? Who has tight lips or relaxed lips? Is someone wetting their lips?

Next look at gestures: maybe someone is nodding, or shaking, or covering their mouth or eyes, scratching their face. Where are everyone’s hands? Maybe a character is cracking his knuckles.  What about their bodies? What are the angles of everyone’s heads? Are the characters close to each other or far apart? Are they slumping? Are they leaning forward? Are they shrugging? Doing this without sound removes all other distractions and just lets you observe. Then, with the sound still off, start to make some interpretations. Assess which emotions you think are present just by watching body language, facial expressions, etc.

Now watch the same scene with the sound on. And again, you want to key into the gestures, facial expressions, etc. while now also listening to the words and assessing what emotions you think are present. How do your silent observations compare to the observations you made when you had audio cues to help? How observant are you?

Now take this exercise back to the workplace

Meetings are a great place to do this, so the next meeting you are in, observe all the facial expressions, the gestures and the body display, and start to mentally note what emotions you think are present. What’s neat about doing this at work is you can test some of your hypotheses.

So after you’ve made your observations and started to figure out the emotions you think are present; come up with three possible explanations for those observed behaviors; three hypotheses. Maybe hypothesis #1 is: I’m watching Jane and maybe she’s feeling sick, and #2 is: Maybe Jane’s upset because we’re talking about her new assignment and she’s confused by the directions, and hypothesis #3 is: Maybe Jane’s tired. What we want to do is come up with various hypotheses for the behaviors we see because when we develop alternative and multiple hypotheses, it prevents us from getting fixated on just one type of solution. Once we get fixated, it’s very hard to keep an open mind about anything. But when we have multiple hypotheses for things, that is, by definition, having a much more open mind, it automatically amps up our listening abilities.

Next consider the likelihood of each of your three hypotheses by observing some more. See if you can find additional evidence, for example, in the “Jane is tired” hypothesis, you might observe: “Jane has two cups of coffee on her desk and she doesn’t usually drink coffee. She has been working late the last few nights, maybe she is tired.” If possible, you can even go to the person and say, “Listen, just curious, but I noticed you’re staring off in the sky, your arms were closed off, etc. Since we’re friends here, I wonder if I can ask you what’s going through your mind, what were you feeling right then?” That way you can find out which of your hypotheses were correct.

The goal of this exercise is to teach you how to be a more effective observer of human behavior and more effective at correlating those observations to your assessment of what emotions other people are feeling. This allows you to develop a more effective sense of the causality of those behaviors and those emotions. Because the more aware of yourself and others you become, the more effective you will be at distilling everything you hear so you can get right to the nugget of the information you need.

For more tips on improving your listening skills, including a 7-part checklist that tests whether you’ve truly heard all the information you need, attend our webinar Lead by Listening.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

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Delivering Presentations: The Rules of Dating Apply Here Too!

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Imagine you’re out on a date and your goal is to really impress. You want to be the only person in the room your date can see or hear. Given that goal, what would you say is the best way to start the date:

Start the date by sharing your life history including all your great accomplishments and the things that matter most to you.Start the date by talking to your date about the kinds of things he/she finds valuable.

Now, in the dating world, pretty much everybody gets it right, you talk about “them.” But here’s the shocker: once we move into the world of business presentations; another place where winning quick audience favor is critical, pretty much everybody gets it wrong. Because instead of using what we know works, most folks begin their business presentations by talking about “themselves.” In fact; over 90% of the presentations we’ve studied began with a slide that looks like this…

And unless you’re attending a narcissist’s convention, this is just a terrible slide and horrible start to your presentation. You don’t even have to read every bullet point to feel the automatic turn off. This slide is all about “you”: when you were founded, how many clients you have, how big you are, how many awards you’ve won, etc. If you used a personalized version of this slide in a dating situation, I guarantee you’d be sitting alone at the bar before the first round of drinks arrived.

It doesn’t matter if you’re presenting to one person or a room of a thousand, the only way to grab your audience’s attention is to spend the first 10 minutes addressing issues that matter to them. Neurologically, those first 10 minutes are when your audience forms their opinions about you. It’s when their brains absorb all the incoming data (that would be you) and then decide whether or not to allocate any more neurological energy to listening to that big noise coming at them (again, that’s you). And because you know this little tidbit of knowledge that comes to us from the world of brain science, you can use it to your advantage.

Dating Research that Proves Affect of Opening with Messages About “Them”

Let’s jump back to dating for a minute. Perhaps you’ve heard of a free online dating site called OkCupid that was created by a couple of guys who met while at Harvard. Now, I married my high school sweetheart, so I don’t go there trolling for dates. But back when the founders were still actively blogging, I used to check out OKTrends and I was pretty impressed with the statistical research they shared. Like the study where they looked at the kinds of words men use in their opening messages to women, to learn what does (and doesn’t) generate a reply. As you can imagine, some of the opening messages were incredibly cheesy. For example, some of the words the study revealed that DON’T work (i.e. women did not reply to the man’s message) were: “sexy”, “beautiful” and “hot.”

I’m happy to report that there’s a redeeming flip side to this. Because there were some words and phrases the guys used in their emails to women that generated huge numbers of responses.  For example:  “You mention…”, “noticed that…” and “curious what…” all got fantastic responses (statistically, messages with those phrases get double the normal response rates). So basically, if a guy appears to have read a woman’s profile, and he shows knowledge and interest in the things she’s interested in, he’s got a much greater chance of hearing back from her. A good “guy message” would sound like this: “You mention that you like cooking and I noticed that you travelled to Italy. I’m curious what your favorite region was in terms of cuisine?” That’s a guy I might let my daughter go out with—when she gets to dating age, and luckily, that’s far in the future.

The lesson in all this is: whether you’re dating or making million-dollar presentations, start by talking about the other person and their interests. Let them know that you know what they want to hear about, that you are sensitive to what they want to gain from this interaction and that you care about the same things that they care about.

In my upcoming webinar, The Secrets of Killer Presentations, you’ll learn how to assess the four personality types you’ll find in your audience so you can begin every presentation knowing exactly what your audience wants to hear from you. And if you’re addressing multiple personality types, you’ll learn how to time a presentation to safeguard those different attention spans so you know when to deliver the bottom line, when to be to linear, when to stick to the facts and when to get warm and fuzzy to build an emotional connection.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

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Anthony LaPaglia (54)

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Won Golden Globe. Another 11 wins & 15 nominations See more awards »
2000-2004 Frasier (TV series)
Simon Moon 2001 On the Edge (TV movie)
Dr. Maas (segment "The Other Side") 2000 Normal, Ohio (TV series)
David Le Tour (original pilot) 1999 Lansky (TV movie)
Charlie 'Lucky' Luciano 1987 Hunter (TV series)
Det. Russell Woodward 1986 The Twilight Zone (TV series)
Punk #1 (segment "The Last Defender of Camelot") 2010 Today (TV series)
Himself 2002-2006 Nature (TV series documentary)
Narrator Edit Won the 1998 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play in "A View from the Bridge". See more »
3 Interviews  | 7 Articles  | 3 Magazine Cover Photos  | See more » Anthony La Paglia | Anthony M. LaPaglia | Anthony Lapaglia 5' 11" (1.80 m) Edit Brother-in-law of Zoe Carides, Ursula Brooks and Danielle Carides. See more » Aquarius

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Kerry Washington (36)

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7 wins & 21 nominations See more awards »
2012-2013 Scandal (TV series)
Olivia Pope 2010 Black Panther (TV mini-series)
Princess Shuri / Baker Woman 2008 Psych (TV series)
Mira Gaffney 2001 Deadline (TV series)
Tina Johnson 2010 Today (TV series)
Herself 2009 Good Hair (documentary)
Herself (uncredited) 1999 Biography (TV series documentary)
Herself Edit (2008) Print ads: Movado watches. See more »
5' 4½" (1.64 m) Edit I try not to let my politics limit me artistically, and you know say like "well I can't do that because I don't ever want to play a black prostitute" or "I can't do that because I don't ever want to play,you know a drug addict". I really try not to do that.What's important to me is to make sure my characters... See more » Has Native American ancestry. See more » Aquarius

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Big Presentation Coming Up? Make it Your Best One Yet

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A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy

There isn’t a presenter alive that doesn’t want their audience absolutely riveted; sitting on the edge of their seats with rapt attention. Yet, the reality in most presentations is that the audience is sitting back, kind of relaxed and spacing in and out.

Here Leadership IQ CEO and best-selling author, Mark Murphy, shares some ways anyone can deliver a killer presentation.

Q: You say storytelling is a critical element in delivering killer presentations that really catch and keep an audience’s attention. How does that work?

MM: It’s all about dopaminergic response. Basically, when something really interesting, like a good story, happens, the brain starts to light up. And if the story is really exciting, the amygdala gets involved (that’s what you want) and says, “Wow! This is fascinating stuff! I’ve got to start activating some of the other chemicals in the brain—we’ve got to pay close attention to this!” So it goes and starts activating dopamine, which is a neurotransmitter for highly pleasurable things, highly attentive things.

And whoa! Once dopamine gets involved people really start to pay attention. Plus dopamine helps sear whatever it is folks are experiencing (in this case, your killer presentation) into their memory so they don’t forget it. So a great story is a way of getting the brain to say, “I am really engaged with this. I don’t want to miss a word that’s being said here. I am going to remember every word I hear.”

Next time you’re listening to someone else’s presentation, pay attention and see if you experience any moments that leap out at you and just get seared into your brain. Where you walk out of there quoting something you just heard to everyone you run into that day. If you don’t have that kind of experience then it is likely that the person speaking didn’t get anywhere near activating anything beyond your prefrontal cortex. They didn’t get into your limbic system, and they certainly didn’t excite your amygdala.

Q: So what’s the secret to telling a great story that excites the amygdala?

MM: There are a number of different ways to tell stories that really get people’s attention. Here’s one that uses an unexpected twist. Imagine you began a presentation by saying, “Six months ago, we upgraded our servers. Our website visitor capacity doubled. Our website loading speed tripled. And our profits dropped by 80%.” You can do something like that. Take your audience in one direction and then all of a sudden take them in a totally different direction. That’s one of those things that will make people’s heads spin a bit and get them to think, “Wait a minute, did I just hear what I thought I heard? I better start listening more closely.” You can also tell stories that build an emotional connection or introduce a startling fact.

Q: What’s one big thing to avoid when giving a presentation?

MM: Narcissism. When you talk about others more than you talk about yourself, that’s good. But when you talk about yourself more than you talk about others, that’s bad. But that can be challenging in some presentation situations. Leadership IQ teaches presenters to apply the Narcissism Ratio which is a little check that signals when it’s time to tell a story or to talk about somebody or something other than yourself. That way you don’t spend 20 minutes talking about all of the awards your company has won – something about which your audience probably doesn’t care. And it directs you to talk about something about which they do care, something that’s really going to activate them and get them on the edge of their seats.

To apply the Narcissism Ratio to your next presentation, keep track of how many times you say “I” or “me” versus the number of times you say “customers” or “employees” or “you” or “they” or anybody other than you. It takes some practice, but it’s really quite an effective way to keep your finger on the pulse of where your presentation is going as it happens. That way you are always on track and making sure your  audience stays fully engaged.

For more tips on delivering memorable presentations, join us for our upcoming webinar The Secrets of Killer Presentations.

A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.

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Consider these 4 Communications Styles When Delivering your Next Presentation

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You may be presenting to a group from within the same industry or even department, but that doesn’t mean everyone in your audience has the same preferred communications style. Different people have very different ways they prefer to give and receive information. Which means that the kind of delivery that engages some people may send others in your audience scrambling for the exits.  One of the big challenges when presenting to a mixed group is correctly adapting your communication style so your whole audience stays focused on what you’re saying.

To make it easier, we distilled it down into four basic default communication styles people can fall into. These are not personality types; this deals specifically with how you like to give and get information. Here’s a brief description of each default communication style:

The Intuitive type refers to those people who are not terribly emotional, but who are quite free form. Intuitive types don’t necessarily like things to flow from A to B to C and so on. They like to cut to the chase, so it’s best to skip directly to the end: what’s the real value you are bringing this person today? If you can get the Intuitive types in your audience to buy in on the end result right away upfront, you’ve got a much better shot at getting them to listen to all the other stuff you’ve got to say.The Analytical type refers to those people who prefer things unemotional but linear. These are your “just the facts” kinds of people. They don’t want to hear a lot of warm-and-fuzzy feeling words, so don’t waste the Analytical-type communicator’s time by telling them you understand their pain; instead just give them the numbers and data they need and want.The Functional type refers to people who generally like their communication to be emotional and linear. These folks like to have control of the process so it’s always best to move in a linear fashion: from A, to B, to C and then follow through right to the end. If you try to skip around in your presentation or jump to the enticement of your “wow” finish, you risk losing the attention of the Functional-type communicator.The Personal relater is both free form and emotional. These are the folks who want the warm-and-fuzzy emotional approach.   So feel free to dive right into all the details such as: Who else is going to be involved/ how getting involved will make them “feel”/ who else they will touch by getting involved, etc.  You can’t just come in and dump a bunch of facts on personal-type communicators, even if they are startling facts. These folks are still going to need a more interpersonal connection.

Even from these brief descriptions of the four communications styles, the conundrum is obvious: they all want something different. The good news is that, by knowing what the 4 types are, you can plan your next presentation knowing you need to hit all 4 types in your delivery. And we’ll teach you how to do that in our upcoming live webinar The Secrets of Killer Presentations.  But here’s a quick little take away secret you can start using now:

When great speakers present to a new or unknown audience, they assume all four communications styles are present. And there’s a certain order they present their information, in order to communication to each style. They begin by addressing the Intuitive types, then they speak to the Analytical types, then to the Functional types and they close by speaking to the Personal types. We see this often in presidential speeches or wherever there’s a mixed audience of preferred communication styles. Working in this order, from the Intuitive to the Analytical to the Functional to the Personal addresses attention span: Intuitives have the shortest attention span, then the Analyticals, then the Functionals and the Personals have the longest attention spans.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

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How Can Leaders and Managers Make Performance Reviews More Meaningful?

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A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy

Q: Leadership IQ’s research into the effectiveness of performance reviews produced some pretty discouraging results. What are the exact numbers?

MM: We did a study of a little over 48,000 people and only 13% of managers and employees thought their year-end reviews were effective. And by effective I don’t mean that they liked the experience, but rather only 13% said their review had a positive impact on their future performance. And just as disturbing, only 6% of CEOs thought the performance reviews their organization used were effective. That’s a lot of resources being funneled into something that is producing more or less zero benefit, and probably even creating new problems. Poorly conducted performance reviews are a big demotivator for most employees.

Q: What can leaders do?

MM: There’s actually a lot that can be done. Starting with the process side, there are factors like: What kind of content you should have in this conversation? What order the conversation should take place? What is the correct basic structure of this conversation? Leadership IQ has specific scripts we teach for talking to high and middle performers, which are really different than the low performer conversations you should be having. And then there’s the development side of a performance review, knowing the right way to plan with the employee for what comes next.

Q: What’s one of the biggest things most performance reviews miss?

MM: Attitude. I see this all the time where a manager gives somebody a 5 out 5 on a performance review and then three months later he’s calling HR saying, “Oh, hey, listen, I need to fire this person.” And HR comes back and says, “What do you mean you need to fire them?  You just gave them a 4 or 5 on their performance review, they just got glowing marks, how could you possibly need to fire them?” And the manager says, “Well, you know, it’s for attitude, it’s for reason that our system doesn’t really evaluate. So I had to give them good marks because they have great skills, but their bad attitude is just killing me and the whole department is suffering.”

Q: Why do so many reviews skip evaluating attitude?

MM: There’s a big misunderstanding about what objective means and it keeps a lot of managers from realizing that attitude absolutely is measurable. Objective means verifiable and observable, it does not mean quantifiable. So just because you can’t assign a number to something, like a bad attitude, like gossip or stirring up conflict, it does not mean it is not a valid issue. Attitude leaks out in behavior, and attitude can be measured to the extent that it emerges in the form of those behaviors. And, of course, behaviors can be verified and observed. Managers may not be able to mind read, we can’t climb into people’s heads and divine what our folks are thinking, but we can observe their behaviors and determine what’s appropriate and what’s not.

Great organizations like Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton and Disney; they all regularly assess attitudinal issues. And it’s those attitudes that make those companies so famous and so successful. So this is one of the things you have to be crystal clear about. You don’t want your managers who are conducting reviews avoiding tackling issues related to attitude because they think attitude can’t be measured. That’s just sending low performers with bad attitudes back out there with strong validation that they are welcome to keep on exhibiting those bad attitudes. It’s just a fact that too many managers mistakenly avoid tackling attitudinal issues because their definition of objective is distorted.

Q: Employees tend to hate performance reviews as much as the managers who have to give them. What can managers do to make it easier on employees?

MM: A lot. You can start by making sure that you call in your high performers first. Let them take that walk into the review with full knowledge that they are in the first group and that defines them as a high performer. Not only is this going to make them feel great, it’s going to send a clear message to your low performers. Especially when you next call in your middle performers.

Also, if you meet with low performers first, they are going to go back out there and interact with their peers and have all kinds of negative things to say: lots of denial, blame and excuses. They’re going to be angry and they’ll want to take others down with them. You take that power away from low performers when you meet with them last, because by then you’ve already got all these high and middle performers out there who are feeling pretty good about things. They’re not going to be interested in listening to low performers gripe and bash. And that’s going to make low performers feel the sting of a poor review even more.

Q: What’s one of the biggest mistakes that happens in low performer reviews?

MM: One of the worst things you can do, and lots of managers do it, is use a compliment sandwich. And that’s a compliment followed by some corrective feedback followed by another compliment. It sounds something like this: “You know, listen, Bob, you’re just so talented.  You’re the smartest person on the team. You get nasty and caustic when we’re in these team meetings and it’s really hurting our morale. You’re just so smart. I want everybody else to see how smart you are.” So basically, if I’m Bob, what I just heard is “I’m great, I’m smart. I hear a compliment. Then I hear Charlie Brown’s teacher (“wawawa”), but, wow, then I hear another compliment, the boss just said he wants everyone to know how smart I am. Oh boy. I’m great. I am golden.” The compliment sandwich is a giant fail. No one hears the corrective feedback shoved in the middle of two compliments.  The only effective way to deliver corrective feedback is to state the facts.

Attend our webinar Taking the Pain Out of Performance Reviews and learn more specific scripts for talking to high, middle and low performers. Learn about the other mistakes managers make when reviewing employees and some simple fixes you can make to conduct more effective reviews.

A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.

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Since When Do Astronauts In Space Get Involved In International Conflicts?

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However you feel about Egypt, Israel, and the Gaza Strip, this photo taken from the International Space Station is a haunting reminder of the division and warfare between these nations. That's Egypt on the left, Israel on the right, and you can see the Gaza Strip starting at the border near the water and going right — it's the grayish portion above the curve. 

However you feel about Egypt, Israel, and the Gaza Strip, this photo taken from the International Space Station is a haunting reminder of the division and warfare between these nations. That's Egypt on the left, Israel on the right, and you can see the Gaza Strip starting at the border near the water and going right — it's the grayish portion above the curve. 

Now tell your friends on Facebook that you like Upworthy! Want more stuff like that? Sign up for our daily email and never miss our best content. This is one daily email that won't disappoint.Like us on Facebook to get more stuff like that! Get more great stuff like that delivered straight to your Inbox! This is one daily email that won't disappoint.

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Guess How Much BP Spends On Oil Drilling Safety. Seriously, Just Guess.

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I don't want to spoil the surprise (go to 1:15 for the answer), but it's almost certainly less than whatever you're thinking.

I don't want to spoil the surprise (go to 1:15 for the answer), but it's almost certainly less than whatever you're thinking.

The Exxon-Valdez oil spill in 1989 and the Oil Spill Pollution Act in 1990 made it mandatory to develop adequate cleanup technology. Needless to say, BP didn't do it. Now tell your friends on Facebook that you like Upworthy! Want more stuff like that? Sign up for our daily email and never miss our best content. This is one daily email that won't disappoint.Like us on Facebook to get more stuff like that! Get more great stuff like that delivered straight to your Inbox! This is one daily email that won't disappoint.

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Don't know much about history? Take our Emancipation Proclamation quiz

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Surely you learned a bit about the Emancipation Proclamation in school — but we’re guessing all you retained was some Cliffs Notes phrase such as, "Lincoln freed the slaves." As the nation celebrates the document’s 150th anniversary, see how well you do on our Jersey-centric quiz:

Q. How many slaves lived in New Jersey in 1863, when the final proclamation was issued?.

a) None! We’re the North, remember?

b) 18

c) 1,745

Sure, New Jersey had outlawed slavery in 1804 — but only sort of. Children of slaves born after that would become free once they reached adulthood. This meant slavery would gradually die. However, it also meant slaves who were children in 1804 would remain a kind of indentured servant, or "apprentice," the rest of their lives, with no prospect of freedom. In 1863, 18 "apprentices" were still alive — most in their 60s or 70s.

Answer: b

Q. But then they were freed by the proclamation, right?

a) True

b) False

Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation was a military order, affecting only those slaves in rebel-held territory. He didn’t feel he had the constitutional authority to change state laws, and he didn’t want to upset the four border states that fought on the Union side yet still had slavery — Delaware, Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky. As an anti-Lincoln Camden newspaper sneered, the president had merely "freed all the slaves not in his possession."

Answer: b

Q. As a Northern state, we welcomed news of the proclamation. After all, we had the Underground Railroad here.

a) True

b) False

c) It’s complicated.

We had the Underground Railroad here because the state’s hostility to escaped slaves made it necessary, points out Rutgers University history professor William Gillette. New Jersey was one of the few Northern states to abide by the Fugitive Slave Act, sending runaway slaves back to their owners.

Reaction was split. "There wasn’t universal support for emancipation," said Louis Masur, author of the newly published "Lincoln’s Hundred Days" and a Rutgers history professor. "People had to be convinced, people had to be persuaded." Quakers in the southern part of the state were strong abolitionists, said Seton Hall historian Larry Greene, but their political power had waned.

There were practical worries: Newark manufacturers worried they’d lose their pre-war market of selling shoes and leather goods to slave owners to outfit their slaves. "There’s also this anxiety of where the freed slaves were going to go," said Clement Price, historian-author of "Freedom Not Far Distant," which charts the history of the state’s African-Americans. "Many who were against slavery as an abstraction would then say, ‘But we don’t want the freed blacks coming here!’ And that’s true throughout the nation, not just New Jersey."

Answer: c

Q. What impact did the proclamation have on any freed black persons who already lived here?

a) It gave them rights they never had.

b) It changed nothing.

c) It opened military service to them.

The 25,000 "free colored" couldn’t vote, sit on a jury, testify in court or sign a contract, according to Masur. The proclamation didn’t change that — but it did permit them to enlist in the Union Army. Lincoln had resisted accepting black soldiers because he worried white soldiers in the border states would then lay down their arms. In addition, even those against the institution of slavery still held racist concepts about the ability of black men to make good soldiers, said Masur.

"They were seen as either savage barbarians, or docile and child-like. Either way, you’re not going to make a good soldier," he said. "These men had to prove themselves time and time again."

Sergeant Edward Richardson, born a slave in Maryland, was a New Jerseyan who served in Company A, 22nd US Colored Infantry. After the war, he settled in Woodstown.

Susan RIchardson Collection, U.S. Army Military History Institute.

Once in service, they were able to change the minds of many New Jersey white troops, said Joseph Bilby, author of "Freedom to All," a history of the state’s black Civil War soldiers. "There are letters home that say, ‘Well, I was against black troops, but now that I’ve seen these guys fight, I’m in favor of it,’â??" he said.

Lincoln eventually came to see black military service as a tactical move that would deprive the South of all that manpower, and provide the Union side with a new source of personnel.

Answer: c

Q. The New Jersey Colored Infantry was pivotal at several key battles.

a) True

b) False

New Jersey never raised its own black regiment for both political and practical reasons. "New Jersey had a lot of opposition to raising black troops. There was a strong racist element in the Legislature and the newspapers," said Bilby. In addition, New Jersey was a small state as well, so wasn’t required to offer up as many troops as the vastly more populous New York and Pennsylvania, said Gillette.

So black soldiers enlisted instead in the "colored" units of other states. Once there, their enlistment would count towards New Jersey’s muster requirement. This lessened opposition, for every black enlistment meant one more white resident who wouldn’t be drafted. All told, 2,909 blacks from New Jersey fought in the war; 469 died.

They also went into the Union Navy, where, because of the tight quarters of ships, crews were integrated, said Bilby. Black troops were paid less than their white counterparts, and didn’t get any raise if promoted.

But they were thrilled to help in the fight to liberate their Southern brethren in slavery. Even white Union soldiers who joined simply to quell the rebellion had their minds changed by the reality of slavery they encountered in their wartime travels, said Masur. "They saw slavery for the first time, and they finally saw what slavery was about," he said.

Answer: b

Q. New Jersey didn’t go for Lincoln in the 1860 election. But it did support his re-election in 1864.

a) True

b) False

At the time the proclamation was issued, "Everything was going wrong. The war was going inconclusively, and the lower Northern states were deeply divided," said Gillette. "You can look back and say everything was hunky-dory, but it wasn’t. You can say the Emancipation Proclamation was inevitable — but it by no means was."

The proclamation made New Jerseyans even more unsettled. "Not everybody, but a huge portion of people believed that no matter what happened, there would be a large influx of blacks competing with whites in the job market at cheaper wages," said Gillette.

The violent Draft Riots that boiled over six months later were hardly limited to New York. Newark and Jersey City also saw sporadic violence from recent immigrants — chiefly Irish — who didn’t want to fight for black slaves who, when free, might show up to take their jobs.

"New Jersey Democrats played the race card quite shamelessly," said Greene. "They’d been harping on this since the 1850s, and with the Emancipation Proclamation, they harp on it even more," he said. Absent an active abolitionist base here in New Jersey, in 1864 the state went for Lincoln’s opponent, Gen. George McLellan. McLellan later served as governor here.

Answer: b

Q. So when did those poor 18 "apprentices" finally get their freedom?

a) With the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.

b) With the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.

c) With the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870.

The Thirteenth was the biggie that finally put a stake in slavery. New Jersey’s Democrat-controlled Legislature refused to ratify it. Republicans took back control of the Legislature in time to ratify the Fourteenth — returning to power partly on the basis of winning the war, and partly over sympathy over Lincoln’s assassination, said Greene. "Slavery really died a slow and largely peaceful death in New Jersey," said Price.

Answer: a

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Motivate Employees at Review Time by Asking “What Are Your Proudest Moments?”

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Employee performance reviews are notoriously painful, but they don’t have to be. Reviews can actually be useful, productive, meaningful conversations that do what they’re intended to do: improve employee performance. Some of the changes leaders need to make to have more effective reviews are pretty easy, like knowing which to talk about first: performance, goals or money. (It’s money). Another key tip is to start every review by asking “What are your proudest moments?”

Some of you may be wondering: how does asking for their proudest moments differ from a self-appraisal? When you ask for a self-appraisal you ask for the proudest moments, but you also ask for the biggest failures. And while it might not be a bad thing for your low performers to have to bring you an honest evaluation of their biggest failures, it’s actually quite harmful to your top performers.

Psychological dynamic different for high and low performers

There’s a different psychological dynamic that happens when high and low performers experience failure. Low performers might not know about the failure, they might not care, or they may have even intended for the failure to happen. High performers, on the other hand, have a high degree of critical self-awareness. This is wonderful, because most of the time these valuable employees already know they messed up—even before you tell them. And they get right to work on fixing the problem and making self-corrections so they never mess up like that again. However, most high performers are also prone to beating themselves up pretty hard when they mess up. And that can quickly turn the focus of the review back onto stuff they’ve already corrected and moved past. Plus you might get swayed listening to a high performer beat himself up and give lower marks than are deserved.

Proudest moments also ensures you don’t miss the greatest thing your employees did that year

Keeping things focused and balanced for high performers is only one reason to ask about proudest moments. Starting reviews with this simple question also helps leaders avoid the biggest employee de-motivator: missing the greatest things your people did that year. What you learn by asking this question gives you great information to work from during the review. Let’s face it, it’s nearly impossible to remember what every one of your employees did 12 months ago, so have your people make the list and tell you their proudest moments. It makes a big difference to them if the two great things they did get remembered and talked about a bit.

Another benefit is that by asking about proudest moments, you get clued in to the kind of meeting you’re in for. If an employee tells you, “I am just so proud of myself because I made it on time for work 70% of the time this past year which is a huge improvement over the 50% I managed the year before,” it tells you what kind of conversation you’re in for.

So before your next performance review period starts, simply ask your people to make a list of their proudest moments. If your organization conducts 12-month reviews, ask employees for their proudest moments from the past year. Or if you do six-month reviews, have them look back on the past six months and answer the question in writing. And just like self-appraisals, always do your own evaluation of the employee before you read their proudest moments. This allows you to avoid neurological biases that can skew your evaluation and make the review less objective.

Learn more about how to make employee reviews less painful including why talking about money should be done in a separate conversation by attending our webinar Taking the Pain Out of Performance Reviews.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

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Hautelinks: Week of 1/31/13

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Written by Zephyr - CF Editor

Wow: Why Women Have So Many Clothes. This image is incredibly powerful and also really depressing. (And if you don’t get why it’s so sad, HelloGiggles explains it perfectly.)

This is kind of related, yet a little less depressing than the above post because the quotes are so good. (Sidenote: Was anyone else reminded of the latest Parks & Rec episode?)

50 Life Hacks to Simplify Your World. I had seen 90% of these, but a few were new to me! (The trick for keeping track of friends who borrow things? Genius!)

This is so weird! Science proves that cuteness makes us literally crazy.

Styleite answers the question we were asking last Sunday: Did Jennifer Lawrence rip her dress at the SAG awards?

4 Valentine’s Day Makeup Looks to Try. I think Rihanna’s look is my fave!

Speaking of makeup, MAC Cosmetics Takes on Betty & Veronica! This is pretty genius.

One more beauty post: We just discovered Findation, which is exactly what you’d think: it’s a tool to help you find your perfect foundation – just input your shade in one brand, and it finds your corresponding shades in other brands.

Honest Department and Clothing Store Names, from Thought Catalog. Hahaha!

The Beauty Department shows you how to use washi tape to make nail art stencils. (You could use painter’s tape or masking tape for this, too!)

If you’re throwing a Superbowl party this weekend, Real Simple has 20 Easy Super Bowl Appetizers that are sure to please even the most discerning guests.

Cracked tells it like it is: 5 Ways You’re Accidentally Making Everyone Hate You. Harsh but helpful!

Why You Should Work from a Coffee Shop, Even When You Have an Office. As much as I hate to admit it, this really is true for me. What about you – are you more productive at home or in a public place?

Spring 2013 Couture Looks We Would Actually Wear, from Lucky Magazine.

’90s kids, you will appreciate this. (Although, sorry, video-makers, I’m still not going to use IE…)

Related: 9 Children’s Books and Authors Every ’90s Kid Should’ve Read. Still can’t believe Hatchet was assigned to kids.

Okay, this is pretty cool: DIY Light Up Headboard, from A Beautiful Mess.

And speaking of awesome decor, this is such a brilliant idea! Love, love, love.

How to Translate “I Wish I Could” Into Actual Results. Brilliant and applicable to practically every discipline.

Refinery29 has tips for dealing with a bad roommate situation.

Hahah, oh god – this is both funny and frightening: 23 Important Life Lessons from Toddlers and Tiaras.

And finally, for your weekly dose of cute, here is a baby highland cow in the (tasty) snow!

Posted on on January 31, 2013 / Filed Under: Hot Websites / Tags: Hautelinks, Internet, Links

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A Listening Exercise to do Next Time you Watch a Movie

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AppId is over the quota

Leading by listening requires developing two kinds of awareness. There’s self-awareness, which involves getting a handle on personal triggers so you know what sets you off, what makes you pay attention, etc. And then there’s awareness of others, what we like to call “other-awareness” where we learn to observe and interpret the emotions of others so we can wipe out any wrongful assumptions we might otherwise make and just stay focused on the facts.

There are two parts to developing other-awareness. The first is developing our observational skills, which is all about focusing and paying attention, and the second part is interpreting those signals. Now, I’m aware this all sounds amazingly easy: we just pay attention and that gives us more other-awareness… piece of cake, right? The problem is we observe all day long, but we typically don’t pay that much attention to what we’re seeing. Consider, for example, a dime. You’ve handled dimes plenty of times in your life, and you’ve had ample opportunity for observation. But can you really describe a dime? “It’s silver and ridged on the edges,” most of us will say. Fewer will know it’s Franklin D. Roosevelt’s face on a dime. And even fewer will be able to correctly say which direction his profile faces, or what’s written on the back of a dime. This is where other-awareness comes in; it’s keying in and really paying attention and more accurately processing everything that’s going on.

Build other-awareness with this fun exercise 

To build other-awareness, there’s an exercise you can do the next time you watch a movie. The movie just needs to be on DVD or on-demand, any format that allows you to pause and repeat a scene a few times.

Here’s how the exercise works. First, pick a movie (it can be one you’ve seen before, but it’s more fun with a film you’ve never seen) that includes a scene with two or three people interacting. Avoid big action movies, as we’re looking for strong dialogue between human beings. You’re going to watch this scene where people are interacting twice: once with the sound off, and then a second time with the sound on.

The first viewing, with the sound off, you just want to observe. What are the people on screen doing? Without any sound to help you out, try and key into what is happening with these characters. Check out their facial expressions: are they smiling, staring, frowning, eyebrows raised, blinking rapidly? Are they breaking eye contact or are they holding eye contact? What’s happening to the color of their faces? Is one person’s face suddenly getting red? Who has tight lips or relaxed lips? Is someone wetting their lips?

Next look at gestures: maybe someone is nodding, or shaking, or covering their mouth or eyes, scratching their face. Where are everyone’s hands? Maybe a character is cracking his knuckles.  What about their bodies? What are the angles of everyone’s heads? Are the characters close to each other or far apart? Are they slumping? Are they leaning forward? Are they shrugging? Doing this without sound removes all other distractions and just lets you observe. Then, with the sound still off, start to make some interpretations. Assess which emotions you think are present just by watching body language, facial expressions, etc.

Now watch the same scene with the sound on. And again, you want to key into the gestures, facial expressions, etc. while now also listening to the words and assessing what emotions you think are present. How do your silent observations compare to the observations you made when you had audio cues to help? How observant are you?

Now take this exercise back to the workplace

Meetings are a great place to do this, so the next meeting you are in, observe all the facial expressions, the gestures and the body display, and start to mentally note what emotions you think are present. What’s neat about doing this at work is you can test some of your hypotheses.

So after you’ve made your observations and started to figure out the emotions you think are present; come up with three possible explanations for those observed behaviors; three hypotheses. Maybe hypothesis #1 is: I’m watching Jane and maybe she’s feeling sick, and #2 is: Maybe Jane’s upset because we’re talking about her new assignment and she’s confused by the directions, and hypothesis #3 is: Maybe Jane’s tired. What we want to do is come up with various hypotheses for the behaviors we see because when we develop alternative and multiple hypotheses, it prevents us from getting fixated on just one type of solution. Once we get fixated, it’s very hard to keep an open mind about anything. But when we have multiple hypotheses for things, that is, by definition, having a much more open mind, it automatically amps up our listening abilities.

Next consider the likelihood of each of your three hypotheses by observing some more. See if you can find additional evidence, for example, in the “Jane is tired” hypothesis, you might observe: “Jane has two cups of coffee on her desk and she doesn’t usually drink coffee. She has been working late the last few nights, maybe she is tired.” If possible, you can even go to the person and say, “Listen, just curious, but I noticed you’re staring off in the sky, your arms were closed off, etc. Since we’re friends here, I wonder if I can ask you what’s going through your mind, what were you feeling right then?” That way you can find out which of your hypotheses were correct.

The goal of this exercise is to teach you how to be a more effective observer of human behavior and more effective at correlating those observations to your assessment of what emotions other people are feeling. This allows you to develop a more effective sense of the causality of those behaviors and those emotions. Because the more aware of yourself and others you become, the more effective you will be at distilling everything you hear so you can get right to the nugget of the information you need.

For more tips on improving your listening skills, including a 7-part checklist that tests whether you’ve truly heard all the information you need, attend our webinar Lead by Listening.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

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FLASHBACK: The Most Sexist Barbie To Ever Hit The Shelves

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AppId is over the quota
Although this sexist Barbie debacle from 1992 inspired one of my favorite Simpsons episodes, "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy," I was never able to find footage of an actual doll ... until now.

Although this sexist Barbie debacle from 1992 inspired one of my favorite Simpsons episodes, "Lisa vs. Malibu Stacy," I was never able to find footage of an actual doll ... until now.

Other common phrases for the Teen Talk Barbie Doll:  "Will we ever have enough clothes?""I love shopping!""Wanna have a pizza party?"
Now tell your friends on Facebook that you like Upworthy! Want more stuff like that? Sign up for our daily email and never miss our best content. This is one daily email that won't disappoint.Like us on Facebook to get more stuff like that! Get more great stuff like that delivered straight to your Inbox! This is one daily email that won't disappoint.

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How Can Leaders and Managers Make Performance Reviews More Meaningful?

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A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy

Q: Leadership IQ’s research into the effectiveness of performance reviews produced some pretty discouraging results. What are the exact numbers?

MM: We did a study of a little over 48,000 people and only 13% of managers and employees thought their year-end reviews were effective. And by effective I don’t mean that they liked the experience, but rather only 13% said their review had a positive impact on their future performance. And just as disturbing, only 6% of CEOs thought the performance reviews their organization used were effective. That’s a lot of resources being funneled into something that is producing more or less zero benefit, and probably even creating new problems. Poorly conducted performance reviews are a big demotivator for most employees.

Q: What can leaders do?

MM: There’s actually a lot that can be done. Starting with the process side, there are factors like: What kind of content you should have in this conversation? What order the conversation should take place? What is the correct basic structure of this conversation? Leadership IQ has specific scripts we teach for talking to high and middle performers, which are really different than the low performer conversations you should be having. And then there’s the development side of a performance review, knowing the right way to plan with the employee for what comes next.

Q: What’s one of the biggest things most performance reviews miss?

MM: Attitude. I see this all the time where a manager gives somebody a 5 out 5 on a performance review and then three months later he’s calling HR saying, “Oh, hey, listen, I need to fire this person.” And HR comes back and says, “What do you mean you need to fire them?  You just gave them a 4 or 5 on their performance review, they just got glowing marks, how could you possibly need to fire them?” And the manager says, “Well, you know, it’s for attitude, it’s for reason that our system doesn’t really evaluate. So I had to give them good marks because they have great skills, but their bad attitude is just killing me and the whole department is suffering.”

Q: Why do so many reviews skip evaluating attitude?

MM: There’s a big misunderstanding about what objective means and it keeps a lot of managers from realizing that attitude absolutely is measurable. Objective means verifiable and observable, it does not mean quantifiable. So just because you can’t assign a number to something, like a bad attitude, like gossip or stirring up conflict, it does not mean it is not a valid issue. Attitude leaks out in behavior, and attitude can be measured to the extent that it emerges in the form of those behaviors. And, of course, behaviors can be verified and observed. Managers may not be able to mind read, we can’t climb into people’s heads and divine what our folks are thinking, but we can observe their behaviors and determine what’s appropriate and what’s not.

Great organizations like Southwest Airlines, Ritz Carlton and Disney; they all regularly assess attitudinal issues. And it’s those attitudes that make those companies so famous and so successful. So this is one of the things you have to be crystal clear about. You don’t want your managers who are conducting reviews avoiding tackling issues related to attitude because they think attitude can’t be measured. That’s just sending low performers with bad attitudes back out there with strong validation that they are welcome to keep on exhibiting those bad attitudes. It’s just a fact that too many managers mistakenly avoid tackling attitudinal issues because their definition of objective is distorted.

Q: Employees tend to hate performance reviews as much as the managers who have to give them. What can managers do to make it easier on employees?

MM: A lot. You can start by making sure that you call in your high performers first. Let them take that walk into the review with full knowledge that they are in the first group and that defines them as a high performer. Not only is this going to make them feel great, it’s going to send a clear message to your low performers. Especially when you next call in your middle performers.

Also, if you meet with low performers first, they are going to go back out there and interact with their peers and have all kinds of negative things to say: lots of denial, blame and excuses. They’re going to be angry and they’ll want to take others down with them. You take that power away from low performers when you meet with them last, because by then you’ve already got all these high and middle performers out there who are feeling pretty good about things. They’re not going to be interested in listening to low performers gripe and bash. And that’s going to make low performers feel the sting of a poor review even more.

Q: What’s one of the biggest mistakes that happens in low performer reviews?

MM: One of the worst things you can do, and lots of managers do it, is use a compliment sandwich. And that’s a compliment followed by some corrective feedback followed by another compliment. It sounds something like this: “You know, listen, Bob, you’re just so talented.  You’re the smartest person on the team. You get nasty and caustic when we’re in these team meetings and it’s really hurting our morale. You’re just so smart. I want everybody else to see how smart you are.” So basically, if I’m Bob, what I just heard is “I’m great, I’m smart. I hear a compliment. Then I hear Charlie Brown’s teacher (“wawawa”), but, wow, then I hear another compliment, the boss just said he wants everyone to know how smart I am. Oh boy. I’m great. I am golden.” The compliment sandwich is a giant fail. No one hears the corrective feedback shoved in the middle of two compliments.  The only effective way to deliver corrective feedback is to state the facts.

Attend our webinar Taking the Pain Out of Performance Reviews and learn more specific scripts for talking to high, middle and low performers. Learn about the other mistakes managers make when reviewing employees and some simple fixes you can make to conduct more effective reviews.

A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.

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Looks on Campus: Christie – Meredith College

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Written by Katy - Meredith College

Here in Raleigh, NC, our weather motto for the month of January is “expect the unexpected.” Take this past week for example: We’ve gone from cold and wintery, to muggy fog, to seventy degrees and sunny, and right back to freezing cold and rainy.

It can be a challenge to dress for these weather conditions, and, as such, many students “opt out” and just wear sweatshirts for the entire month. (Ugh!) So naturally, Christie’s bright pink blazer stood out in a big way on campus. Read on to learn more about Christie and her style!

Name: Christie Lane

College: Meredith College

Year: Senior

Major: Psychology

Minor: Social Work

Who or what inspires your style? “I like a lot of classic looks and lots of black and white together. I am a huge fan of Audrey Hepburn and always have been. If I could dress like her every day, I’d be so happy.”

Where do you like to shop? “I work at a recycled clothing store, Uptown Cheapskate, here in Raleigh. Ever since starting there, I have been shopping at stores like Marshall’s, TJ Maxx, and, of course, other consignment stores. I do like brand name labels, but I prefer to get more for my money.”

How would you describe your sense of style? “Classic.”

Why did you choose this particular outfit? “I chose this outfit because I thought the blazer fit well and was a good pop of color for this dreary rainy day. I like black skinny jeans because you can pair anything with them. For example, you can dress them up with a good black leather flat, which is exactly what I did for my internship.”

What fashion advice would you give to other students looking to improve their style? “Dress up often if you can because the better you feel like you look, the better you will feel overall. I know it’s hard to do that as a college student, but I think it really helps!”

What are your favorite trends right now? “One of my favorite trends right now is stacking bracelets with my watches. I think a few small bracelets in different styles can add to an outfit and make a statement. I also love colored denim. I love my red jeans – especially for NC State events! (That’s the color of the coed university down the street from Meredith.)”

What do you do for fun – do you have any unique hobbies or interests? “I like to craft for fun. My hot glue gun is my best friend at times! I also like to paint – I wish I had more time to do it. One of my weaknesses is window shopping. I love going to stores just to look around, even if I don’t have any money! I also love spending time with my niece and nephew as well as going to the beach with my family.”

If you could raid anyone’s closet, who would it be and why? “It would have to be either Audrey Hepburn or Jackie O! They are both so timeless and elegant – I love them both!”

1. Bright Blazer and Bold Pattern

Christie’s eye-catching hot pink blazer is a fun take on an old professional classic. (I don’t know about you, but my professors are going a little bit overboard in stressing the need for black and navy work clothes.) I also love how Christie opted for a patterned blouse instead of wearing a solid color.

2. Mix Classic Watch and Jewelry

Christie said she likes to combine her bracelets and watches to make ordinary pieces more exciting, and I couldn’t agree more – they really do make a serious statement! Paired with her delicate necklace, the watch and bracelet are just enough jewelry for a casual internship setting.

What do you think of Christie’s outfit? How do you like to bring color into your day? Do you fight the rainy-day blues with clothes too? And is anyone else’s weather just as confused as ours? Leave a comment!

Posted on on January 30, 2013 / Filed Under: Looks on Campus / Tags: Audrey Hepburn, Blazer, classic jewelry, Jackie O, Looks on Campus, Meredith College

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What makes great listening so difficult?

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A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy

Q: Listening seems like it should be so simple, yet the average person retains only 10% of what they hear. What makes great listening so hard?

MM: Great listening requires a lot more than nodding your head and going “Uh huh. Wow, that’s interesting.” There’s actually a whole way of thinking we need to embrace about the information that’s coming at us. And that involves how we can parse it all out, dissect it into its component parts and then probe for more information. Also, we need to make sure we’re not getting fixated on unimportant information; that we’re not letting our emotional buttons get pushed such that we can’t hear the real kernel of the message that is coming at us.

In the world of management and work, not everything we hear has equal importance, so we need to know what we are listening for. Because there are some things we hear, certain words, for example, that can set us off and cause us to miss some of the really important stuff that we do need to hear.

The challenges of great listening are plenty. But if we gain the skills, and a deeper understanding of how it all works, so we can then identify and key into what is absolutely important and relevant for us to hear, great listening is absolutely possible. Anyone can do it, but you have to want to do it.

Q: What do you mean when you say we need to key into the important parts of a conversation?

MM: Here’s one example of how it works. Let’s say we’re in a situation where an employee is uncorking on us a little bit. Maybe they want to talk about a project we assigned them that’s not going well and maybe they are little (or a lot) upset. They are using emotional language and it’s subjective, and even a little negative. Other than letting them unload, we think there’s not a ton of value in listening to what’s being said. But the thing is, as difficult as that may be to listen to, there may be a really important nugget of information that we really do need to hear. Something that is going to clue us in to what this person needs so they can go fix the error, or avoid having it happen again. And yet, we’re not hearing it because we’re fixated on all of the other stuff; the distraction. So we need to have a listening model that allows us to separate the stuff we do need to hear from all the rest. We need a way to remove the emotional element and just get to the facts in order to help this person find the right solution.

At Leadership IQ we teach the FIRE model which allows us to separate the Facts from the Interpretations, Reactions and Ends. Because it’s in the facts that we are going to find that one nugget of really good information we need. The FIRE model allows us to compartmentalize all these other pieces and say, “I just got some tough feedback, but there are some good facts here. There are things I need to listen to, so I need to compartmentalize some of this other stuff I’m hearing so what I am really focusing in on is the facts.” And until we have a listening model that lets us separate it all appropriately, great listening is very hard to do.

Q: How can we know if we got all the facts?

MM: First we need to know how to probe deep to get past all the superficial stuff so we are only focused on the facts we need. And there different kinds of probes, like factual and direct probes or emotional and indirect probes. The situation and the comfort level that’s present basically directs the kind of probe you use.

For example, indirect probes are best in helping circumvent defenses when you think someone’s guard is up. But once you probe down to the facts, and you are no longer dealing with interpretations, reactions and ends, there’s actually a very simple checklist you can mentally run through to make sure you are collecting adequate facts. It’s the same basic checklist used for all information gathering: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.

The first step is to get the conversation focused on just the facts and you can do this by doing the “Who, What, When, Where, Why and How” assessment in your mind where you say:  “Okay, well, first, who: do I know who was involved. Okay, yup. I got that. Do I know what they were talking about? What actually happened? Okay, got that. Do I know when it happened? Do I know where it happened? And then, am I making assumptions based on these things or do I actually know why it happened? Do I know what precipitated this? And do I know how it happened?” It takes a bit of practice, but after a while it just happens naturally so you are always thinking about the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of your conversations and that alone will make you a much better listener.

To learn how to keep your own emotions in check when listening to someone is making you agitated, attend our webinar Lead by Listening.

A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.

View the original article here

What makes great listening so difficult?

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy

Q: Listening seems like it should be so simple, yet the average person retains only 10% of what they hear. What makes great listening so hard?

MM: Great listening requires a lot more than nodding your head and going “Uh huh. Wow, that’s interesting.” There’s actually a whole way of thinking we need to embrace about the information that’s coming at us. And that involves how we can parse it all out, dissect it into its component parts and then probe for more information. Also, we need to make sure we’re not getting fixated on unimportant information; that we’re not letting our emotional buttons get pushed such that we can’t hear the real kernel of the message that is coming at us.

In the world of management and work, not everything we hear has equal importance, so we need to know what we are listening for. Because there are some things we hear, certain words, for example, that can set us off and cause us to miss some of the really important stuff that we do need to hear.

The challenges of great listening are plenty. But if we gain the skills, and a deeper understanding of how it all works, so we can then identify and key into what is absolutely important and relevant for us to hear, great listening is absolutely possible. Anyone can do it, but you have to want to do it.

Q: What do you mean when you say we need to key into the important parts of a conversation?

MM: Here’s one example of how it works. Let’s say we’re in a situation where an employee is uncorking on us a little bit. Maybe they want to talk about a project we assigned them that’s not going well and maybe they are little (or a lot) upset. They are using emotional language and it’s subjective, and even a little negative. Other than letting them unload, we think there’s not a ton of value in listening to what’s being said. But the thing is, as difficult as that may be to listen to, there may be a really important nugget of information that we really do need to hear. Something that is going to clue us in to what this person needs so they can go fix the error, or avoid having it happen again. And yet, we’re not hearing it because we’re fixated on all of the other stuff; the distraction. So we need to have a listening model that allows us to separate the stuff we do need to hear from all the rest. We need a way to remove the emotional element and just get to the facts in order to help this person find the right solution.

At Leadership IQ we teach the FIRE model which allows us to separate the Facts from the Interpretations, Reactions and Ends. Because it’s in the facts that we are going to find that one nugget of really good information we need. The FIRE model allows us to compartmentalize all these other pieces and say, “I just got some tough feedback, but there are some good facts here. There are things I need to listen to, so I need to compartmentalize some of this other stuff I’m hearing so what I am really focusing in on is the facts.” And until we have a listening model that lets us separate it all appropriately, great listening is very hard to do.

Q: How can we know if we got all the facts?

MM: First we need to know how to probe deep to get past all the superficial stuff so we are only focused on the facts we need. And there different kinds of probes, like factual and direct probes or emotional and indirect probes. The situation and the comfort level that’s present basically directs the kind of probe you use.

For example, indirect probes are best in helping circumvent defenses when you think someone’s guard is up. But once you probe down to the facts, and you are no longer dealing with interpretations, reactions and ends, there’s actually a very simple checklist you can mentally run through to make sure you are collecting adequate facts. It’s the same basic checklist used for all information gathering: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How.

The first step is to get the conversation focused on just the facts and you can do this by doing the “Who, What, When, Where, Why and How” assessment in your mind where you say:  “Okay, well, first, who: do I know who was involved. Okay, yup. I got that. Do I know what they were talking about? What actually happened? Okay, got that. Do I know when it happened? Do I know where it happened? And then, am I making assumptions based on these things or do I actually know why it happened? Do I know what precipitated this? And do I know how it happened?” It takes a bit of practice, but after a while it just happens naturally so you are always thinking about the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How of your conversations and that alone will make you a much better listener.

To learn how to keep your own emotions in check when listening to someone is making you agitated, attend our webinar Lead by Listening.

A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.

View the original article here

Asking “Why?” Often Implies Judgment

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

One of the most harmful things you as a leader can do to compromise good listening is to impose judgment on the person you are communicating with.  And when you ask “why” somebody did something, one thing to bear in mind is that the word “why” often implies a judgment. Even if you don’t intend to do this, the word “why” is often used as a “Why did you do that?” and it has a snarky “Boy that was stupid” implication.  Even if your intentions are innocent and you really just want to know why someone made a decision a certain way, the recipient of your question is likely to react defensively if you use the word “why” as a question.

Instead, try taking a slightly circuitous route and instead of saying “Well, why (did you do that)?” which implies “What are you dumb? That was a bad thing,” say something like “Tell me more about what made you choose that action.” This is a much less judgmental way of asking “Why?” and it encourages the recipient to open up and share their reasoning. Then, listen to what they have to say. Collect the facts.

Knowing how to identify the facts and separate them from interpretations and reactions is key to effective listening. Attend our webinar Lead by Listening and uncover the psychological secrets of great listening.

An expert in aligning goals and people to create thriving organizations, Mark leads one of the world’s largest studies on leadership and employee engagement.

Mark’s award-winning work has been featured numerous times in publications including The Wall St. Journal, Fortune, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and the Washington Post. His media appearances include CBS News Sunday Morning, ABC’s 20/20, Fox Business News and NPR. Mark has lectured at Harvard Business School, Yale University, University of Rochester and University of Florida. Mark is the author of five books including the McGraw-Hill international bestsellers, Hundred Percenters: Challenge Your People to Give It Their All and They’ll Give You Even More and Hard Goals. Mark’s most recent book, Hiring for Attitude, reflects the team’s latest research and insight into how hiring decisions can align with engagement goals and culture characteristics.

Leadership IQ’s turnaround, culture change, and performance enhancement through employee engagement work has been recognized in a diverse set of industries including healthcare, financial services, energy, manufacturing, logistics, and hospitality. From his roots as a turnaround specialist, Mark created Leadership IQ to address problems in performance before they hit the bottom line.

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How Can Leaders Successfully Communicate and Implement Change?

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota

A Q&A with CEO Mark Murphy

Q: You cite a Harvard Business School study that found 70% of change efforts fail. Were these big or small changes?

MM: The study wasn’t specific to big, mammoth change efforts like reinventing a business model. These were small change efforts. But big or small, most change efforts seem to run into the same brick walls over and over again, and leaders reacted predictably badly 70% of the time.

And it’s actually more serious than that, because not only did the majority of change efforts fail, the failures also threatened to take down the leaders that tried to lead them. A Leadership IQ study found that mismanaging change is actually the number one reason why CEOs get fired; it far outpaced financial performance. Every leader understands the risks are high. Change is hard and when it doesn’t work, there are dire consequences. All that said, we don’t have to let change fail. We can almost guarantee its success if we understand the basic phases and nature of change.

Q: What’s at the core of creating a successful change effort?

MM: There are three questions that have to be answered for a change effort to be successful. If these questions can’t be answered, the change effort is going to fail:

Why do we need to change?Where are we going?How are we going to get there?

The interesting thing is that most successful changes don’t answer just one of these questions; they answer all three. We can, with almost certainty, predict the success or failure of a change effort simply by asking, “Do you understand why we need to change?” and “Do you understand where we are trying to get to?” and “Do you think we can actually pull it off; do you know how we are going to make it happen?” If you can’t get answers to these three questions, the Why, Where and How of change, then your change effort is almost certainly doomed to failure.

And perhaps more importantly, the 30% of change efforts that succeed (according to the Harvard study) tend to pull all three levers simultaneously. They tend to work on the Why, the Where, and the How all at the same time. The problem is that most leaders have a favorite. They work on either the Why, or the Where, or the How. The overwhelming majority of folks do not work on all three simultaneously. Of course, depending on the environment of the organization, some of these are going to be easier or harder than others to pull off.

Q: What’s the most effective way to communicate change?

MM: Letting folks know about change is a pretty tough message to deliver. And the worst way to communicate that message is the yelling-and-screaming approach. Yes, you have to deliver a message that is sufficiently tough so that you can get people to leave a place they like. But the more emotional you make your message; the more likely people are to put their guard up. Emotional content will only make them feel attacked; they’ll box themselves in and they’ll tune out your message.

Instead you have to take a much more low-key approach. Focus on data – the less emotional the message the better. Make the message factual without hyperbole or exaggeration. Let the message be what the message is going to be. Communicate the message in as calm and rational a manner as possible. The more objective your data, the better. Language like “I think” or “My gut tells me” is not convincing.

You’re much better off getting some objective evidence in order to justify why it is we need to leave our present state. Get evidence from third parties: financial, operational, strategic, market, benchmarks. With the objective third-party facts delivered in a calm, rational way you will have the best chance of actually moving people off of the status quo. Get additional evidence from your audience (self-report surveys, focus groups, etc.) as well as from your customers. To the extent that you can get information from really credible sources, not just third party sources, but from people like your customers, patients, etc. you will be giving people a sense that your sources are believable. Doing so will deliver the message that it’s not about you, the CEO/manager, but it is about the customers, patients or shareholders.

And give people some time to process it all. Remember, it may be the first time your people are hearing this message (or at least the first time they’ve needed to pay attention to it). The more educated you can make your people, the more access to can grant them to a similar level of information that you have access to as a leader, the easier your change effort will be. The broader the horizon they can see, the more likely they are to come to the same conclusion that you’ve come to – that change is necessary.

Who is the best person to deliver the communication?

Employees are more likely to listen to their middle managers than their CEO. The employees will look at whatever the CEO puts out in a memo with skepticism until they ask the middle manager, “What do you think? Is that for real? Is this really going to work or is it just going to be like all of the other times?” Employees may turn to some of the more powerful employees to see what they think. CEOs can write memos until they are blue in the face, but at the end of the day it is how managers and key performing employees react to the change effort that is critical.

To learn more about communicating and implementing change in your organization, attend our webinar “Change Management That Lasts.“

A professional corporate writer with over 20-years’ experience crafting just the right words for executives to use in challenging situations, Lyn is a passionate and adept qualitative researcher. Her seasoned skills as an interviewer make her quick to identify the unique attitudes and behaviors that define an organization. Lyn’s extensive expertise in public relations and persuasive communications translates strongly in her contributions to Leadership IQ’s custom-training programs.

View the original article here