Research: New ARF Study Says Storytellers Succeed

The Advertising Research Foundation and American Assn. of Advertising Agencies, both based in New York, set out to measure consumers’ emotional responses to TV advertising. What they discovered is that advertisements that tell a branding story work better than ads that focus on product positioning.

Crossroads Dispatches: perhaps consider what life would be like if we truly lived by what we believe

images Visit (detail of entire painting above) by Mari Klarwein; Breath of Gaia, by Josephine Wall (btw, discovered via a cool art blog by Melissa Ulto you may enjoy, Multo.com::Visual Magic); Tree of Fruitfulness, by Lieve Prins; can’t find origin (from Myspace page while surfing) but probably one of those fantasy games

10 Top Tips for Unplanning the Perfect Unconference

What’s the secret of some of the unconferences in recent years that have had educators and learners excited, enthralled and changing their ways of working and thinking? Well, I’m not sure there is a secret per se, but having unplanned a good dozen or so unconferences and visited a score more there are some things that keep cropping up from which we can all learn.

As we head hurtling towards an online-offline unconference at the Scottish Learning Festival, that is, TeachMeet07 on the evening of September 19th (sign up now!), I’ve also been preparing some of the ground for another year of TeachMeet Roadshows in East Lothian, informal, funky training events which have already proven highly successful in getting some swift and sustained adoption of new technologies in our classrooms. Both use the following ten top tips.

This is from Pro Blogger and excerpted from Day 5 of the Challenge

More Great Reader Blog Tips

We’ve hit day 5 in the 31 Days to Building a Better Blog project and I’m hearing some great reports from bloggers who enjoying the daily tasks that I’ve set so far.

To help organize the project a little better and to help people keep track of both my tips and reader submitted tips I’ve created a central 31 Day Project page which lists all tips. This way you can start the project at any time and do it at your own pace.

Reader Blog Tips continued to roll in over the last three days with 56 more submissions added to the 25 from the first two days. Once again there are some great posts below and I encourage you to dig into them to see what you can learn about improving your blog. Please note – if you submitted a tip that isn’t in this list it will probably be in the next one. Enoy:

Thursday, June 28, 2007

How real is this. Very real from my perspective. It’s the best advice I have read in a long time. To have your head tuned in this attitude and direction is a life skill.

You work in a community, not a company

Responding to Jay Cross.

“It doesn’t work to take one from column A and one from column B, e.g. secrecy and transparency are opposites. Competition and collaboration are the same deal.”

Ah ha! I remember saying something like this on this very blog, not so long ago.

“What should a person do if they find themselves in a non-believing, ice-age organization?”

Make your own rules, make your own job. Work not just in your organization but in your sector, your community. Carve out the appropriate niche for yourself no matter where you are employed. Move on if your employers don’t recognize your value.

Look at anybody who is a leader is this space, or any space. It is not a person who did their job. It is a person who *changed* their job by either redefining their existing responsibilities or creating a new position (or company) entirely.

“What’s the most enlightened thing to do here? I’ll post this issue to the Internet Time Community in case the discussion grows lengthy.”

Again – understand that while you may work for a company, your work environment isn’t defined by – or limited by – the company. You work in a community, not a company. You may be paid by the company but your job is defined by the community and, if you’re doing it well, you’re serving the community.

Remember that you don’t work for the company, you work for yourself. The company is merely your largest (and perhaps only) client. Keep in mind that the company will not hesitate to terminate your position, redefine your role, or do any number of things that will not be in your best interest. You have to watch out for yourself.

In the meantime, the company will watch out for itself. It doesn’t need a whole lot from you, beyond what you’ve promised to deliver to it. What the company does is up to the company. You aren’t going to change the company – it will have to change itself (that is, the owners or executives will have to reach their own change of heart and attitude on their own).

The best you can do is to show what your (newly defined) work and (personally defined) attitude can bring to the company. As publicly as possible, document and record, should you ever need it for a promotion case (or job interview).

I was totally blown away by this post and the accompanying video’s. This guy truly has the royal jelly and is so inspirational. I’m going to check for his book this afternoon.Ben Zander on performance and transformation

Every presentation is a performance, and Benjamin Zander knows a thing or two about the art of performance. As Dan Pink and I were riding the train back to central Osaka a couple of weeks ago he tipped me off to Ben Zander. There are a lot of good presenters, Dan said, but Ben Zander is one of those gifted few who is in another league. I just finished reading The Art of Possibility by Ben Zander and his wife Roz Zander and I’m inspired. The suggestion to checkout Ben Zander was the best tip I have received in a very long time. There are too many good lessons in this book to go through all of them here, but allow me to focus on just a few as they relate to presentations, leadership, and communication in general.

You have to take a risk
In most cultures — and certainly here in Japan — making a mistake is the worst thing you can do. Zander says that it’s dangerous for musicians, for example, to be so concerned with competition and measuring themselves against others because this makes it “difficult to take the necessary risk with themselves to be come great performers.” However, only through mistakes can we see where we’re lacking, where we need to work. But we hate mistakes so we play it safe. Yet long term nothing could be more dangerous if our goal is to be insanely great at what we do. Zander suggests that instead of getting so dejected by mistakes, we instead exclaim loudly (or to ourselves) “How fascinating!” every time we make a mistake. This little gem alone was worth the price of the book. Think about that. Another mistake? How fascinating! Another opportunity to learn something just presented itself. Another unlucky break? No worries! Move forward.

It’s not (always) about success/failure, it’s about contribution
Rather than asking questions such as “Will I be appreciated?” or “Will I win them over?” and so on, ask “How can I make a contribution?” Below is an excerpt from this video clip (3:45 mark) where Zander is coaching a student on his “presentation” (in this case a musical performance):

“We are about contribution, that’s what our job is … everyone was clear you contributed passion to the people in this room. Did you do it better than the next violinist, or did he do better than a pianist? I don’t care, because in contribution, there is no better!”

Rather than getting bogged down in a sea of measurement where you compare yourself to others and worry about whether you are worthy to be making the presentation or whether someone else could be doing it better, instead realize that at this moment in time — right here right now — you are the gift and your message is the contribution. There is no “better,” there is only now.

The real power is in making others powerful
Vanity and tyrannical management styles are not uncommon among conductors even today, Zander says, which is perhaps one reason why in at least one survey orchestral players rank only slightly above prison guards in job satisfaction. The truly great conductors, says Zander, are like any other great leader, they understand that their true power “derives from [their] ability to make others powerful.” The question to ask, then, is not “How good am I?” but “What makes [this] group lively and engaged?” It is not about gaining sway over your group (or audience or class) so that they will play it the way you envision — or see things your way — but rather the question now becomes how best to enable them to play it beautifully the way they are capable. In presenting — and certainly in teaching — we need to make certain that the audience is engaged so that they may, with our help, find for themselves what is there to be discovered, including the discovery of the possibilities that may be within them.

Don’t take yourself so g—damn seriously!
“Lighten up,” Says Zander, “and you lighten up those around you.” This is not to suggest that you shouldn’t take your work seriously (you should), or even that you shouldn’t take yourself seriously (that may depend on time and place), but for absolute certainty we must all get over ourselves. There is perhaps no better way to “get over ourselves” than the use of humor. From birth we are concerned about measurement and worried about perceived scarcity of love, attention, food, etc. that seems to be the way of the world. Zander calls this the “calculating self,” and in this environment of scarcity, competition, and comparison “the self needs to be taken very seriously indeed.” No matter how successful and confident we may become as adults, our “calculating self” (concerned with measurement and worried about scarcity) is weak and sees itself at risk of losing everything. No wonder the calculating self is concerned with “looking out for number one” and takes itself so g—damn seriously.

The goal, then, is to move away from the calculating self, the self that lives in a world of scarcity, exaggerated threats, and deficiencies, and move toward a healthier attitude of sufficiency, wholeness, and possibilities. Getting over ourselves — and humor is a great vehicle for this — allows us to see the “creative nature of the world and ourselves.” When we understand what an infant can’t — that we can not control the world, that we can not impose our will on people’s hearts — we begin to get over ourselves. When we learn to lighten up we see ourselves as permeable not vulnerable, says Zander, and we stay open to the unknown and to new influences, new ideas. Rather than trying to resist and fight the river of life we move with a harmonious fluidity and grace, learning to join rather than resist the flow. Humor is a wonderful way to remind everyone around us — no matter how hard the work gets — that our true self is not obsessed with childish demands, entitlements, and calculations but is instead supportive, confident, helpful, and even inspiring. A presentation is as good a time as any to let people see that side of you. (Certainly Dan Pink showed that in his presentation, as did my friend Daniel Rodriguez in his talk last month in Osaka.)

Give way to your passion (playing on one buttock)
It is not enough to know a piece of music intellectually or to play it without any mistakes, you have to convey the true language of the music emotionally, says Zander. When musicians truly get into the music and play it with such heart and emotion that audiences are moved beyond words, Zander noticed that the music was flowing through the musicians, taking control of their bodies as they swayed from side to side. Zander, then, urges musicians to become “one-buttock players,” that is to let the music flow through their bodies, causing them to lean and to move from one buttock to the other. If you’re a musician, or making a performance of virtually any kind, and you are totally in the moment and connecting with the language of the music and the audience, there is no way you can be a “two-buttock player.” You’ve got to move, you’ve got to connect, and you must not hold back your passion but instead let the audience have a taste of the commitment, energy, and passion you have for the music (or the topic, the ideas, etc.). This quote below from Martha Graham captures the essence of the idea of giving way to passion (from page 116 of The Art of Possibility). I think you can apply these words to the art of performance or presentation, and frankly to life in general including leadership, entrepreneurship, etc.

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”

— Martha Graham

You decide. You can hold back, aim not to make an error and play it perfectly “on two-buttocks,” or you can say “Screw it!—I’ll take a risk” and dare to lean into the music with intensity, color, humanity, and passion and quite possibly, in your own small way (and on only one buttock), change the world. Play it with total sincerity and with your entire body — heart and soul — and you will make a connection and change things. As Ben Zander said while encouraging one of his talented students to play it in the “one-buttock” style:

“If you play that way, they won’t be able to resist you. You will be a compelling force behind which everyone will be inspired to play their best.”

— Ben Zander

Link
• Watch video of Zander on the Big Speak page (upper right column).

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