by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, For Salespeople, Sales Techniques
Another good reason to avoid jargon, shibboleths, and technical terms with colleagues and prospects. It makes you sound untrustworthy, even criminal. Listeners naturally wonder, “What are you hiding behind those obscure references, technical terms, and acronyms?” For good reason.
The word jargon originally meant unintelligible noises resembling speech, like the twittering of birds. But early on, jargon became the name of the peculiar speech used by criminal groups.
–Professor Heller-Roazen
Learn to Talk in Beggars’ Cant
The New York Times
See also, Misunderstood Jargon, on this blog.
by Tony Mayo | For Business Owners, Team Manager Skills
CEOs and their Boards agree. Executives need coaching on delegation, listening, and conflict resolution. Are you ready to get to work on these aspects of your job?
—What CEOs Really Want from Coaching
Gretchen Gavett
Harvard Business Review
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, For Salespeople, Sales Techniques
No sooner did I post my article on the pitfalls of misusing jargon that I found myself in a conversation that was confused and distorted by the use of technical terms without a shared context.
A client mentioned his plan to delegate the task of staying in regular, informal contact with customers between transactions. We naturally agreed that these “keep warm” meetings were a valuable and often overlooked source of repeat business. Since the activity is so valuable for the business, I asked how he was going to track the sales representative’s performance on scheduling and conducting these visits. “I’m not worried about that. Her personality assessment is clearly very high ‘I,’ so I know she will happily do the meetings.”
I told him that puzzled me. The most popular assessment tool is (more…)
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, Quotes and Aphorisms
The principles of meeting facilitation, as delineated three centuries ago.
…a mutual deference is affected; contempt of others disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained, without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority. These attentions and regards are immediately agreeable to others, abstracted from any consideration of utility or beneficial tendencies: they conciliate affection, promote esteem, and extremely enhance the merit of the person who regulates his behaviour by them.
–David Hume 1711-1776
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
Section VIII Of Qualities Immediately Agreeable To Others.
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, Team Manager Skills
While coaching many top executives I have noticed that managers seeking “advice” are often just avoiding a confronting conversation. I remind them of some wisdom embedded in the development of our language.
Con is Latin for “with.” Con-front is to face something together, to move forward in unison. Doesn’t that make confrontation more appealing? Appealing or not, it is a big part of every manager’s job.
Versare meant to turn or change, especially to open or close a door. In early English a con-versation meant talking with a person to make a change, to open some doors and close others. This also is a big part of managing.
Still, not everyone knows or remembers how to have these confronting conversations. Here is my step-by-step guide, for free: tiny.cc/toughtalk
See also, on this blog, step-by-step conversation instructions with video here:
The Conversation Contract.
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners
Could a simple five-minute interaction with another person dramatically increase your weekly productivity?
…
employees who know how their work has a meaningful, positive impact on others are not just happier than those who don’t; they are vastly more productive, too. … “Even minimal, brief contact with beneficiaries can enable employees to maintain their motivation,” the researchers write in their paper, titled Impact and the Art of Motivation Maintenance: The Effects of Contact with Beneficiaries on Persistence Behavior, published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
…
the one-two punch of knowing the beneficiary’s needs and meeting him in person generated the largest impact on motivation.
—The Art of Motivating Employees
Knowledge@Wharton
See also, on this blog, step-by-step conversation instructions with video here:
The Conversation Contract.
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, Leadership Development
Guidelines for Communication that Supports “Team”
- Speak for yourself about yourself. Starting sentences with “I” is a powerful shortcut to this skill. You can state facts, opinions, emotions, concerns, requests, suggestions—whatever—if and only if you take ownership of them.
It is okay to carry a message or speak for someone else; just be clear about what you are doing. Label it.
- Communicate to cause a result.
Stay in every conversation—whether in person, by email, telephone, whatever—long enough to learn how your communication lands with the other person and be responsible for their response. How they feel or act is your business and you should be ready to respond.
- Include the whole team in team conversations. Avoid having conversations about any person not participating in that conversation. This guideline also includes those conversations you have inside your head.
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, Team Manager Skills
Pair interaction, for example, conversation, is not a sequence of stimulus and response but a simultaneous co-creation, “both parties are processing an ongoing stream of stimuli and responding while the stimulation is still occurring.”
–Psychologist Susan Vaughan
in Two is the magic number:
a new science of creativity.
Joshua Wolf Shenk
Slate Magazine.
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners
…adding five substantive conversations to your weekly social calendar could boost your spirits dramatically.
–Skip the Small Talk:
Meaningful Conversations
Linked to Happier People
Scientific American.
See also, on this blog, step-by-step conversation instructions with video here:
The Conversation Contract.
by Tony Mayo | Communication, Conversation, & Confrontation, For Business Owners, How to Set Goals
You have probably heard the old adage, “If you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.” Though often attributed to the very busy Lucille Ball, the insight may be as old as civilization. People who know how to get things done gain a reputation for effectiveness and have many opportunities to be busy.
My CEO executive coaching clients are very busy and receive many requests to get things done from employees, shareholders, clients, family members, churches, governments, non-profits, etc., etc. So many requests, in fact, that they often find themselves expending time and attention on things that are not their top priorities. They may also find themselves letting people down, backing out of promises, and feeling inadequate.
I often need to train my clients on how to say, “No.”
I developed my technique many years ago when I had established a strong reputation as an effective volunteer in an organization I supported. This reputation led to a deluge of requests, more than I could responsibly accept. Here is the formula:
(more…)
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