You will have come across the idea, which probably originated with NLP, that ‘every communication should have a desired outcome’. You might want to change someone’s mind, to get them to do something for you, to sell them something, or…
The 5 Biggest Email Mistakes Executives Make – And How To Avoid Them
Email as a way of communicating has certain ‘traps’ baked into it, which can obscure your message, mess up your working relationships, or if you’re really unlucky even end your career. These pitfalls are easy to avoid – and yet…
The ‘Golden Rule’ Is Not Enough
The ‘Golden Rule’ or ‘ethic of reciprocity’ – essentially, ‘treat others as you would like others to treat you’ – is one of the foundation stones of morality, not just in Western thought but in religions and cultures worldwide. It’s…
The CRAFT Model – How To Influence People
This is a simple 5-step process to for influencing people to change their minds. It’s not the only way to do it, but it does give a step-by-step process that I trust you will find useful. The process is derived…
The ‘S.T.I.R.S.’ Model for Emotionally Intelligent Feedback
Bearing the principles for delivering emotionally intelligent feedback from the previous article in mind, here are the steps for actually delivering the feedback. As a reminder that what you should be doing is stirring the recipient to change their behaviour,…
Why ‘Calibration’ is important in communication
NLP jargon alert! “Calibration”. What on earth does this mean? You know if you have a pair of old fashioned kitchen scales, you have to make sure they are set to zero before you measure something. That way, you are…
Emotional states affect the impact of messages
Some research from Dr Robert Cialdini’s excellent Inside Influence Report for May 09 suggests that the emotional state of an audience affects how receptive they are to particular kinds of messages. To save on processing effort and stave off information…
Obama evokes ‘new emotion’ – ‘Elevation’
TheStar.com | Mind & Mood | New emotion dubbed 'elevation'.
Researchers at the University of California-Berkeley last week successfully teased the uplifting emotion, stimulating the vagus nerve, from lab subjects after playing them Barack Obama's victory speech. The subjects reported "a feeling of spreading, liquid warmth in the chest and a lump in the throat." Past attempts to elicit the emotion failed. Vistas of the Grand Canyon didn't cut it. Neither did reading poetry to test subjects.
Powerful moments of elevation "push a mental reset button, wiping out feelings of cynicism" and replacing them with hope, optimism and moral inspiration, says Jonathan Haidt, the psychologist who coined the term.
Later in the same article, Haidt says something else that caught my eye:
"Watching Obama," Haidt says, "people feel like they're being called to their higher, better selves."
At last…
(thanks to Sandy McMullen for bringing this to my attention)