Feb 13 2009
Manage, Influence and Motivate
Brilliant workshop yesterday at Royal Holloway. To Manage, Influence and Motivate you certainly need to master communication!
The day explored how we communicate meaning through our words and our body language. If you want to say “No”, words don’t help much when your body language says “If you push just a little harder I’ll give in!!”, most people can read that message loud and clear and yes, they push that little bit harder until we give in… How much better if our “No” meant no and our body language backed us up!
We discussed a number of books during the session:
I was really happy to recommend any of Macolm Gladwell’s books as an easy introduction to some very interesting areas. His latest, “Outliers” explores how ‘geniuses’ are made rather than genetic… his work has some profund implications about how we nurture our talented youngsters and what gifts we might be unknowingly throwing away. I’d probably recommend The Tipping Point and also Blink even more highly – but take a look to find out more about these books.
We also discussed another book “Taming Your Gremlin” by Rick Carson – an absolute classic that can show us how to free ourselves from negative thoughts that are often the root of our anxiety and insecurity! The amazing thing is – it’s oh so simple…
I didn’t mention a Nancy Kline during the workshop but I nearly did. We explored active listening as a means to communication and I can’t think of a better or more powerful way to listen than to use Nancy’s simple and startling wisdom.
And if you want to use language to influence, to persuade or even to understand more clearly, these are the books for you. Robert Cialdini has to be top of my list. Accessible, authoratative and amazingly entertaining. As you read it, scales will fall from your eyes as you see these techniques in use…
Rose Chelle-Charvet writes a more dense text but this is also a powerhouse. Maybe not for an idle interest but if you’re serious about taking your use of language to the next level….
We covered so much more during this workshop and the delegates – a wonderful and inspired bunch of Academics – brought their own wisdom in abundance… what a way to spend Thursday!
