Okay, this is a little embarrassing. Normally, I don’t like to talk about myself or toot my own horn. Well, at least not more than once or twice an hour and not in front of more than 100 people. But in this case I’m sort of trapped by the topic I’m writing about, which is “Your Personal Elevator Speech.”

Recently, in our Daily Fix column, I wrote about how you can leverage your hard-wired responses to your own name to increase the positive effect of your personal elevator speech on your psyche. You can see that post here. But we all understand things better when we can see examples, so I thought I’d share a personal elevator speech I wrote a few weeks ago when I was trying to get my ass moving on a project and having some doubts about whether I would be able to get through it.

I have to warn you, it’s nauseatingly positive. You can hate on me in the comments if you want, but keep in mind the purpose of the speech – it’s for me to tell myself in moments of self-doubt, and to leverage the sound of my own name. Here’s goes:

“Nick, you are smart, hard working, and successful. You can do anything you put your mind to. You know how to team up with creative and productive people, Nick, and how to get the best from them, and this time will be no exception. You entered law school on a bet, became an editor on the law review, and graduated with the top students in your class. You opened the Japanese Martial Arts Center after putting together a group of investors and built it to 100 adult students in record time. Nick, starting with a list of suggestions from your friend Don Prior, you learned the SEO business, mastered it, and now you have a successful SEO business that provides a really valuable service to business people all over Southeast Michigan. You’ve written five books, Nick, including 101 Ideas to Kick Your Ass into Gear that you co-wrote with Ian and Budo Mind and Body which made Black Belt Magazine’s list of Essential Gear. Nick, remember all the great things you’ve done, and how you set out with passion and determination. You can do anything you put your mind to, Nick, and this latest project is no exception. Nick, now is the time to get started!”

That’s it. You know that funny feeling you get when you address yourself by name? That’s your nervous system responding from a very deeply programmed place, just like it did when your parents said your name when you were about to be punished, or when your lover coos your name in the candlelight. It’s a very powerful tool, and it can help you remake your self image. Use it wisely, and it will help get you to a place where you can do anything you set your mind to!

Each week for the next few months, Ian and I will be riffing on a theme from our recently published book 101 Ideas to Kick Your Ass Into Gear. This week’s theme is “Tell Your Story”

When the story was written, even I was surprised by how much violence I had experienced as a kid. I shared the story with my sister, and she said she was saddened, but not surprised, by the memories. I don’t feel damaged by the experiences, but I did wonder if being around all that violence was what led to my passion for martial arts. In the end, besides having a therapeutic moment with my sister, I did get some great insights into how to tell the story of JMAC.

Whether you tell your story for therapy, just to share it with people who care about you, or to re-cast your life in a light that helps to embolden and energize you, I highly recommend it. Find a place that helps you write well, grab a tasty caffeinated beverage, and dig in. After all, what’s more interesting than YOU?

Each week for the next few months, Ian and I will be riffing on a theme from our recently published book 101 Ideas to Kick Your Ass Into Gear. This week’s theme is “Tell Your Story”

It’s pretty amusing how the “spare the rod, spoil the child” debate about child-rearing seems to continue well into our adult lives when we find ourselves in the position of either “parenting” or “being parented” in the workplace. Especially in sales. I personally haven’t worked directly in sales very much; my work has usually been more related to marketing, but I often find myself working closely with sales people or departments. Two things make me a horrible salesperson. One is that I refuse to sell things I don’t believe in. This is in itself not a bad thing, but someone like me is likely to kill a lot of sales that would otherwise happen with an especially inquisitive customer. When selling, I’m very prone to reaching a point where I want to yell at the buyer “How DARE you doubt me. Why the hell would I be selling it if it weren’t worth buying?!?” Not very conducive to selling, as you might imagine. The other thing is that when working in marketing, I’m merely thinking of ways to make people aware of a product. I’m not literally telling them to buy it. Things change for me when it comes down to someone letting go of their hard-earned money. I worry WAY to much about whether they’re doing the right thing with it. We’ve discussed integrity here before, and this is one scenario where “too much” integrity might not be benefitting anyone.

So as I said, I’ve had a lot of opportunities to observe sales methods, and I’ve put a lot of energy into at least studying them. This year though, something really struck me. I’ve been calling it the “Tasers or Candy” dilemma. Because I do contract work, and am not directly employed by anyone, I get to see things from a different angle than both employees and their bosses. And I also get to work in quite a variety of settings. Recently I was working with two different projects, one with a global cosmetics firm which shall remain nameless, and one with a group of what I’m going to call “ethnic businessmen” who are variously of Arab, Central European, or Mediterranean descent. They joke about their ethnicity all the time, and if this makes you squeamish, maybe you better go away now. I’m about as “color blind” as people get, but the simple fact is that different cultures bring different approaches to doing business, and if you can’t learn the reality of this, you may bungle opportunities that otherwise could be very successful if you didn’t have your politically correct undies in a bunch.

So this whole Tasers vs Candy theme began one day a few months ago when – within a two hour period – I had to work directly with the global cosmetics firm (hereafter referred to as “GCF”) and the “ethnic businessmen” (hereafter referred to as “EBM”) regarding sales strategies heading into the holidays. First, let’s talk about the EBM strategy. The interesting thing about the core of the EBM strategy is that to the extent that there IS one, it’s largely based on the salesperson understanding the high expectations placed on them, even though they may not be precisely defined. There are no incentives offered beyond straight commissions, but if the salesperson does well and sticks around long enough, they learn that there ARE in fact incentives – in the form of unexpected bonuses or revenue sharing -  which are often far better than what one might expect or be offered in typical corporate American environments. So there’s no candy promised. On the other hand, the Taser is always evident, with lots of profanity tossed around, and the potential for getting yelled at. I call this Poinephobic Performance Maintenance. It’s based largely on the fear of being punished, and the employees in question often resemble PTSD sufferers. But in the big picture, they more closely resemble family members with a verbally abusive parent, because the boss actually DOES really care about them, and much like the “honeymooning” of abusive relationships, the rewards are positive in direct proportion to all the apparent hostility dished out. So. In the Tasers and Candy framework, this method is almost all Taser, and no Candy.

Where’s My Candy?

So this brings us to the more familiar “gimme candy” method. A surprising amount of the sales motivation strategies I see in play are based almost ENTIRELY on getting candy for being good, and NOT getting any if you’re NOT good. It’s often based on goals for a specific period of time, and is literally as simple as “If you sell x amount by x date, you will receive x“, or “you will receive x percentage unless you manage to sell up to x amount, in which case we will give also you the fixed amount of x dollars“. The problems with these basic schemes are manifold, in my opinion. The GCF I referenced above uses these simple models, which – in the real world – fall flat on their face for several reasons. The first is poor training and communication. At one location I worked with, the clerks that could be making commissions were paid about ten dollars an hour if they sold NOTHING. They are rarely terminated for poor sales performance, as long as they dress according to code, and perform all their basic tasks at the counter. This is often called “clerking it”, with a heavy negative implied meaning.

Visualizing the Candy

The approach I used in this situation to motivate the sales people was to pull them aside, and ask them if they understood their commission structure. They would say “sure, I get 10% of all sales and a bonus at x dollars for the month“. Then I would ask how much they made an hour. They’d say “ten dollars, before taxes“, and I’d say “how do you figure?“, to which they’d reply “well, it’s what ALL of us get paid to start, right?” Then I’d slide a thousand dollars worth of cosmetics in front of them. This was easy, because it’s very expensive stuff. Then I’d ask “If we didn’t pay you an hourly, how many of these things would you have to sell in an hour to make double your current hourly?“, and it would start to dawn on them that if they only made a point of selling two facial creams every hour, they’d be raking in twenty bucks just on the commission. We’d then make little charts showing them how it was almost impossible to NOT be taking home thirty bucks an hour, if they were even doing a half-assed job of selling.

Non-continuous Assessment & Thievin’ Dogs

There are other problems that are easily recognized, if you just examine things in action a bit. This probably happens far too little in sales management, where sales managers Taser the salespeople and send them into the wild with promises of candy when they come back with results. One is that many sales goals have great rewards for reaching them, but no incremental incentives. I actually have overheard salespeople say “well, by Tuesday I’ll know if I can make this month’s goal, and if things aren’t looking good, I’m not gonna sweat it for the rest of the month – I know my numbers from the last few years and I’m not gonna waste all that energy if I’m not gonna make the bonus” Which is INSANE if you think about it. The incentive structure effectively acts instead as a DE-incentive. Another incredibly dumb strategy is giving products that the person is selling as the incentive. Sure, make a person you’re only paying 10 bucks an hour sell hundred dollar items all day, and then reward them with one of the hundred dollar items. This is not only a mildly insulting incentive regardless of the item’s retail value, I would argue that the average company really hates to look honestly at the pilfering that goes on, and when they DO give it a hard look, they respond in the wrong way. They institute harsh policies and create a paranoid environment, rather than looking at how the original environment and policies led to hiring people that ended up feeling comfortable stealing from them. The point being that in any case, there’s a reasonable chance the employee has already given THEMSELVES the “bonus”.

So What’ll It Be, Tasers, Or Candy?

So I’ve gone all over the map here to talk about a simple question, which is: what is a good fundamental approach to motivating sales people? I think a talented and successful sales force is much more the exception than the rule. And having sat in on plenty of sales team meetings in wide variety of contexts, I feel confident in saying that the most common problem is the simple-minded and polarized approaches mentioned here: Sell a lot, and you get some candy, don’t sell a lot and you get tasered. The candy approach is more familiar in less aggressive and competitive environments like retail, and the taser approach is more common in high-pressure, high-stakes environments like car sales, commercial real estate, financial services, high-volume tech industry sales, or any position where wholesale sales reps are dealing with entire districts or regions of retailers. One classic example of just how reasonable the “taser” metaphor actually is would be the movie Suckers. I personally know three auto dealership sales managers who make watching this film mandatory for new hires. Why? In spite of the fact that the film is often referred to as a “low rent Glengarry Glen Ross”, the sales meetings portrayed in the film – which are meant to motivate the staff to be ruthless and manipulative in ways that only a car salesman could be – are based on real-world auto sales tricks that only real-world car salesman are familiar with. It’s actually a decent training film for this kind of aggressive and deceptive sales environment, and the minor gratuitious nudity and b-movie heist plot keep the new hire engaged enough to watch the whole thing.

Let’s Put Down Our Weapons & Try Some Peace Talks

So I’ve actually had a lot of luck the last few months with the Taser or Candy question, because framing things in a humorous fashion like this opens up the dialog from both ends. Both the managers and the managed can talk more freely about the core concepts in question when using such absurd reference points. And what happens then? Well, communication. And once the floggers and the floggees are allowed to discuss what’s REALLY important, everyone suddenly remembers it’s the CUSTOMER that’s most important, for one thing. They’re also more likely to try to understand what’s really going on, instead of resenting the demands sent down from some distant VP of sales who – sadly – really has NO IDEA what is going on beyond their office and the documents they shuffle around. In one instance in which I helped the staff look at what they were selling and what an incredible opportunity they had right in front of them, they were suddenly able to connect the crazy numbers sent down from on high with an hourly activity. And you know what happened? Sales at that location increased FORTY PERCENT in sixty days. Yes, I said 40%. I said it ALL IN CAPS and repeated it, because I didn’t want you to think it was a typo.

So the next time you feel like whipping out the cattle prod or throwing bribes around the staff, why not try a little direct communication. I know it sounds archaic and naiive, but you have to admit that a 40% increase in sales is a lot more shocking than a taser could EVER be. And we were still offering the exact same amount of candy, we just did a better job of describing how delicious it was.

It seems like almost every book on self-development suggests that you take control of your inner dialogue – that stream of self-talk generated by your brain. You comment to yourself on almost everything, and virtually everybody I’ve had a conversation with about it says that the self-talk is mostly negative. There are some serious problem with that: (1) it colors your view of existence and often blinds you from noticing all wonders of life surrounding you; (2) the self-talk often comes out in the form of “other-talk” – the things you say to people often sound like the things you say to yourself and you aren’t always much fun to talk to; and (3) negative self-talk seems to take the form of “I can’t” way too much of the time – leading you to pass up opportunities for accomplishment that people with positive self-talk would likely take on.

About 3 years ago I decided to take the advice offered by many of these personal development authors and actually try to change my self talk. I tried two approaches. The first was to learn to stop it. That’s more or less what Zen disciples try to do, and I find it VERY difficult. Sometimes during meditation I can live in the space between the thoughts for a while, and that’s a very enjoyable feeling. But out in the real world, since I find it almost impossible to stop the dialogue, I’ve learned instead to replace it.

Instead of saying “that guy who just cut me off is an a**!” I try to say to myself, “Boy, he’s in a hurry!” Instead of saying, “So and so (somebody I’m working with) will probably screw this up,” I’ll say, “Let’s give her a try and see if she gets it done.” And probably the one thing I’ve learned to say to myself that’s made the most powerful difference, the real game changer, the thing that’s helped me get more done than ever before, and to take on new and more profound personal and business challenges, is, instead of saying, “I probably can’t do that,” I say, “I can definitely do that if I approach it the right way.”

Quitting is hard, but it can be really helpful. Ian and I wrote about it in our new book 101 Ways to Kick Your Ass Into Gear. But if you can’t quit, then you can try to replace your current habits with ones that help you become happier, more motivation, and potentially more successful!

If you write one page a day, you can have a 365-page novel by the end of 2012. But consider this: you can write one crappy page each day, or you can write one great page each day. I leave it to you to guess what kind of novel you’ll get with each approach.

In martial arts, golf, or any other physical pursuit, figuring out how to correctly do a single component of a technique and mastering it is the “one thing” you ought to focus on. Of course, if you’ve done any important physical activity, you know that it often takes longer than one day to master even a single component of your sport. But even if it takes a week, you still end up with 52 solid aspects of your chosen activity in the bank, which means your overall execution can be greatly improved in one year.

In business, choosing one aspect of your marketing, client relations, efficiency, or cash flow to focus on at a time, and making sure you not only understand it, but have put into place a system for carrying it out, will ensure your continued success. You can maintain a business or limp along during good economic times without this approach, but when the economy struggles, those competitors who are getting one thing right each day will quickly put you out of business.

One caveat: most single aspects of any activity require maintenance even after you’ve “mastered” them. So you might want to build in to your plans not only some time to focus on your “one thing,” but also some time to review the last “thing” each day. Eventually you’ll create some kind of routine that lets you review, refine, and master the essential aspects of your chosen mission, and you’ll rocket towards success!

The Episcopal priest Joseph Fletcher developed a theory called “situational ethics.” Basically, he taught that to serve the ultimate law, that of “love thy neighbor,” some flexibility in one’s ethics was acceptable. It’s probably true that, within certain limits, we should forgive ourselves our minor trespasses as long as we are striving for a worthy goal.

Where this kind of ethics goes wrong is when it becomes a driving principle rather than a way to recognize the inherently imperfect nature of human existence. “Hey,” you say, “I’m not going to try very hard to do the right thing because, after all, I’m basically a good person.” The problem with this kind of thinking is that it leads to a progressively more slipshod and uninspired view of life.

I think that if a personal credo is going to allow for errors, it should be very focused on what is actually right and good, and avoid building in excuses for behavior that lacks integrity. If you strive for great success, strive also for great compassion. If you desire riches, accept great responsibility. If you wish for happiness, learn how to bring happiness to others. Start with integrity, and build from there.

What’s stopping you from doing it? Is it money? Time? Is there some class you need to take first, or some kind of equipment you need? It seems like everyone we know has a dream or a business idea, but precious few seem to execute the ideas and make the millions they think that idea is worth. I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone at points in my life; but what is it that stops us from pursuing the grand visions in our hearts and heads?

It’s Not A Lack Of Tools

I regularly marvel at the fact that we actually accomplish so little given what is available right at our fingertips. I sometimes think that maybe it’s the VERY AVAILABILITY of these tools that prevents us from doing things. I’m going to use a few examples, ranging from the small and personal to the grand and history-making.

The Small & Personal: My Magazine

Ever since I was a teen (before personal computers even existed) I’ve had a sort of fantasy about publishing a magazine. I mean a real, turn-the-pages, high quality magazine. I’ve realized a less-tangible version of that dream in creating sites like the one you’re on right now, or my pop culture site Dissociated Press. But the funny thing is that the only time I created a real, physical publication was way before I had all the amazingly powerful tools that are right inside the average personal computer these days. In the 80′s, I did a short run of a self-published magazine with a few friends. We used dry transfer letters, cut-and-paste, and TYPEWRITERS! It actually didn’t look too shabby. We would print it at the local copy shop and hand-assemble it. And I would argue that the challenge of thinking it wasn’t possible is what drove us to actually do it! Meeting and arguing about layout and content, having to actually MAKE SOMETHING WITH OUR HANDS really put a special spin on it. I could open Creative Suite 5 right now and get to work on a new magazine, and in spite of the fact that I could actually create a print-ready publication, the process would feel empty, and distant, and theoretical. And I’m probably not going to do it any time soon.

The Grand & History Making

Two amazing things happened back in the sixties. One was that a lot of people suddenly sensed that something was wrong in our culture. That people should be treated more equally, and that maybe we needed to be a little more responsible to the world around us, and our fellow humans. The other was that someone pointed at the moon, and said “let’s go there!”, and for some crazy reason a bunch of other people agreed. So a civil rights movement was born, with no Internet, no cell phones – hell, no PHONES in many cases, and around the same time, a bunch of people got together and built a bunch of 300 foot tall rockets to send men to the moon, three at a time. Can you imagine either of those things happening today?

Source

As the humorous internet meme featured above points out, available technology seems to have little impact one’s actual desire to DO something. I would argue the same about other momentous and brave acts through history. GPS is available all over the world. The “G” is for “global”, in case you forgot. Can you imagine what Magellan’s journey was actually like? No electronic navigation, no idea what weather lay ahead, no ENGINE for cryin’ out loud! Heck, before Magellan, that whole “globe” issue was still a hotly debated topic itself. Or the Declaration of Independence? Setting pen to paper – when a “pen” was a fancy stick that you dipped in ink and used to scratch words onto animal skin – was a far different process in those days. It’s pretty likely that you had put some thought into things before you bothered creating an actual document. Can you imagine the founding fathers hunched over Microsoft Word 76, typing, deleting, trying to get the typeface right, with Clippy popping up saying “You appear to be trying to write a declaration of independence, would you like help with that?”

So What Is It That Really Makes Things Happen?

I’m going to take a stab at this, and then turn around and see if anything I’m pursuing passes muster. Feel free to chime in with your own thoughts; when I’m done with THAT assessment I might have lots of time on my hands to post and review your ideas.

Vision vs Seeing

If you just look at the moon, and say “wow, that is really beautiful”, that’s kind of a nice thing. But there’s no vision in just seeing. Vision would be “That is really beautiful! I must paint a tribute to it!” or “That is an amazing recurring sight in the sky! I must erect Stonehenge!” or “Wow, that looks amazing! I think I will go there!” Seeing a problem or a possibility is hardly the same as DOING something about it, and the impetus to act usually comes from a vision. A dream. A hoped for outcome that is larger than simply accomplishing the original task. As in the case of a civil rights movement, where the real dream was a better world MADE POSSIBLE by equality, not simply creating equality for its own sake.

Insurmountable Challenge

I would argue that intrinsic to many truly worthwhile ventures is a significant – if not insurmountable – challenge. Sure, you know that if you REALLY WANTED to, you could use email, Twitter, Facebook, and direct mail to launch a product or promote an idea. But will you? Even a lot of people who really aggressively put these ideas to work fail. But what if you found out your child or other loved one was going to die within 30 days, and the only way they could be saved is if you raised enough money for a special procedure. I bet you’d take all this knowledge and MAKE IT WORK. Or figure out an even more clever way to achieve your goal. Illumination without fire? IMPOSSIBLE! Human flight? IMPOSSIBLE! Cure Polio? IMPOSSIBLE! The list of things that were achieved exactly because they were impossible is quite lengthy. What’s the challenge in your dream? Is there one? If there isn’t, what will drive you to realize such a dream?

Planning, Passion, Purpose & Persistence

Planning things can be critical to making things happen, but plans are useless without the other three “P” words above. The “purpose” of going to the moon was probably not just to study the place, grab a few rocks and come back with them. Arguably the greater “purpose” was a massive proof of concept of two globally competing ideologies, i.e., capitalism and communism. The fact that human values seemed to be at stake imbued the venture with a sense of purpose, and gave participants the passion and persistence necessary to achieve the goal. Do you know the root of the word “passion”? It’s from the Late Latin word “passio”, which means “suffering” and “submission”. If you’ve ever passionately pursued something, you know that being passionate doesn’t mean you’re just intensely drawn to something, it means you’re willing to suffer for it. There are reasons that people have an almost religious relationship with the products of companies like Apple. Sure, the company is fundamentally driven by the same motives as other tech companies, but the reason the iPad is the iPad and other tablets are still just tablets is largely because of the passion and sense of purpose the creators embodied. Aside from the intense commitment to excellence that Steve Jobs imbued in his underlings, the iPod, iPhone, and iPad weren’t just refined versions of existing devices or concepts, they had visions of a greater purpose that drove them far beyond the hardware. They were all tools for massively distributing content and applications that people were hungry for, something other tablet makers still don’t seem to have grasped, except perhaps in the case of the Kindle.

So as I said above, feel free to chime in. Unless I can actually apply all these ideas to my OWN ventures and not scrub them the same day, I’m going to have a lot of leisure time soon.

One way to look at diet is that eating for pleasure leads to lethargy, and eating tactically can lead to positive changes. If you’re struggling with motivation and depression, and you’ve eliminated any serious psychological or health problems as possible causes, consider trying this kind of eating for a week, and let us know what you think. Please consult a doctor before beginning any new dietary regimen. There are only 6 rules:

1. Eat more frequent, smaller meals, always including a little protein

2. Eat ample green vegetable with every meal (including breakfast!)

3. Drink at least 8 ounces of water every hour

4. Eat NO simple carbs (like sugar or processed flour)

5. Eat a wide variety of foods (fish, poultry, venison/vegetables/nuts/fruit), but not too much of any single food at a sitting

6. Cut out the alcohol and cut down the caffeine

Many of the “fat burning diets” take a similar approach, and if you’re inclined to follow a diet with a brand name, be our guest. In any case, pay attention to your energy level, your mood, and your productivity, and let us know if you notice any positive changes. We think you will!

As a kid, did you ever see the “Goofy Gophers” cartoon, in which the two characters Mac and Tosh were so incredibly considerate that it seemed they would never accomplish anything, always saying things like “You first, my dear,” and “But, no, no, no. It must be you who goes first!”, or agreeing with each others’ unnecessarily complex phrases with a hearty “Indubitably”? I was recently reminded of these two rascally but respectful rodents as I sat in on a meeting of a group of political activists. I use the term “activist” loosely; in spite of the fact that I vigorously support the aims of this particular group, I doubt they’ll ever accomplish anything, and I find sitting in on meetings with them almost excruciating. Why? Because of a phenomena we’re all at least a little familiar with, i.e., the dreaded groupthink.

Collectivity & Cooperation vs Procedural Paralysis

I’ve always been a team player myself. In fact, one of the cornerstones of the method I bring to any work I do is the demand that all involved parties are committed to the good of the task at hand, and not bound by their ego-driven attachment to the ideas they have about it. I believe in that mysterious “It Factor”, the idea that for virtually everything around us, there’s a best natural manifestation of the “soul” of the thing, whether it’s the sculpture that a certain piece of marble should be, or the way a song should be played by a particular group at a certain moment, or the way a room should be arranged. Or the results of a group of people’s collective action. But this is a fine balance. Being respectful of everyone involved in something does not, in my opinion, mean that everyone deserves a 100% equal voice. I’ve always known this theoretically, but had never seen it in action until recently. The main problem with attempting absolute consensus is two-fold, and will manifest in the worst way when 1.) A really bad idea is the first one agreed upon for consideration, and 2.) the group maintains 100% commitment to respecting the possible validity of the idea and the input of everyone involved, no matter how inane their perspective is. In the case of the group I was working with recently, matters were made worse by the fact that even the basic procedures of the meeting were open to discussion, so before even discussing any action, literally an hour was spent on discussing discussion procedure.

Benevolent Dictators & Ego Collisions

Although I’m a big fan of the “benevolent dictator” in many situations – a great film director or stage manager are great examples – if a group is committed to 100% consensual processes, there are probably only two solutions – which I’ll get to in a moment – and which won’t allow for well-intentioned assertiveness. The common response of someone who sees this paralysis occurring and actively tries to fix it is usually implosively catastrophic. The person will usually preface what they say with “I have over X number of years experience with” and then explain why the thing they’re saying is so valuable to the group. Even if it IS valuable to the group, the only word the group hears is the “I”, and even if the person only uses the word twice at the beginning to say “when I did this I”, the group only hears the word echoing cavernously throughout the room as they imagine the person’s head swelling like a cartoon as they self-aggrandize, wondering when they’ll ever shut up so the group can get back to groupthinking.

Assertions As Questions

This is the oldest managerial trick in the book; everyone knows that the best way to get someone to do something is to ask them, and that people will be most on board with something when they feel like it was their idea. If a group has actually CHOSEN groupthink as their preferred method though, the only hope of re-directing the train of thought is to find some incredibly passive way of injecting a new idea. And this is dangerous ground. The problem is that the flawed thinking of the group is usually so painfully obvious that it almost enrages the parties who see the problem, so it’s almost impossible to actually assert an idea, even if it is completely based on verifiable facts. The idea has to be posed as a question about a possibility, and one has to tread lightly to avoid being bluntly critical of the existing trainwreck that is already in motion, or risk being permanently and subtly ostracized or marginalized by the group.

Or You Can Take Your Marbles And Go Home

Depending on what’s at stake, and how bad the groupthink is, it may be worth sticking around and being patient. And patient you will have to be, because the kind of material that’s often referenced for consensus decision making is material like this Seeds for Change Guide for Consensus Decision Making. The methods themselves will be alien to many, and the procedures are elaborate, so you can easily spend hours just outlining procedures and training the facilitators to implement them. And who will still be around at that point to listen? Well, probably not me. As a person with a strong team spirit, I like actually playing the game, and maybe WINNING, and have no desire to disrupt the fun of others. I’m probably more apt to take my marbles and go play elsewhere. And I think it’s important to realize that this can be as productive and cooperative as staying and acquiescing to the group. Chances are that unless you’re literally maladjusted in some way, there are probably other people in the group who feel the same way, and you can start a new game with them!

So it was really nice to get a lesson in gratitude from someone who might appear to be a lot less fortunate than I. My work has put me in contact with the Ann Arbor Center for Independent Living lately, and being around people with disabilities who are happy, productive, and working hard to make their lives better has been really inspiring. However, just by chance I found myself sitting next to a guy who is completely paralyzed from the waist down, and overheard him say this to the woman sitting next to him, also in a wheelchair (he talked for about 20 minutes, so I’m doing my best to share the spirit of what he said in a few words):

“The number of blessings each of us has is virtually unlimited. You can breathe, right?” The woman nodded. “When you’re relaxed, you breathe gently, right? When you exert yourself, you breathe more deeply? When you reach your physical limits, your lungs burn with the exertion, and it makes you feel excited to be alive, doesn’t it?” She agreed, looking him right in the eyes. “You’re looking right at me, and you can see who I am, can’t you? You can see color, light, texture, distance, shapes, the smiles of happy people, the fresh skin of children and the skin of the old, etched by time. Your hands can grasp, shake hands, hug, caress, use silverware, and handle a paintbrush. Your mind can plan, imagine, decide, analyze, understand, and wonder. And your heart can feel all the emotions, from anger and sadness to joy, exhilaration, and love.”

She was dabbing at her eyes by the time he stopped talking, and I was so moved by his words that I approached them and introduced myself. It turns out that she was new to the world of disability, and he, being much more experienced in it, was helping to guide her. I think the lesson is one that we all can be taught!