What difference does five minutes make?

If the five minutes in question in the first five minutes of a conversation or meeting, it will make almost all the difference in determining whether or not you are successful in getting what you want from the encounter.

In the first five minutes, each of the people present decide:

  • What you want from the encounter
  • What attitude you will bring into the encounter
  • What your observations of the other person mean for your likelihood of success.
These three decisions now become the filter for all the information present in your encounter. You will notice expressions, attitudes or information that supports your expectations. You will likely miss information, attitudes or expressions that do not fit with your expectations. 

It's true that much of this happens much more quickly than the first five minutes. But the first five minutes gives us a unit of time that most of us can handle more comfortably consciously. We cannot always imagine that we have made up our minds in the first 3 seconds of an encounter (even if it is true). But we can entertain the possibility that the first five minutes gives us enough time to respond consciously and unconsciously in ways that set our expectations for the rest of an encounter.

Those five minutes are disproportionately important. They reward preparation. If you back up the time frame so that you prepare your attitude and your goal before you start the connection, you streamline the process and set yourself up to notice what you need to notice to get what you want.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The hypnotic contract

Under what conditions would you allow someone else to tell you what to think?   If you have watched a stage hypnotist, you have seen what looks like one person exercising remarkable control over the thoughts and actions of another. It is fascinating, in part, because we have all seen it happen in real life. Suddenly someone we know seems to be relying on someone else to do the thinking.  Even if the influence is good, it is a little frightening. The secret is that there are no magic words.  In order to lead someone into hypnosis, that person has to be willing to go there. Often the people you see on stage are more than willing. For whatever reasons, they are enthusiastic about giving up self control and allowing someone else to take charge. They know that there are limits to what can happen on stage and they are only agreeing to give up control within those limits. What you see in hypnosis is an agreement between two people. Like all agreements between human beings, it stretches as far...
Read more

Good with people

What do you think of when you hear the phrase "good with people?" When a wine is good with steak, it means that both the steak and the wine taste better when enjoyed together. If you are 'good with people' that could mean that both you and they perform better when you work together. "Good with people" should not be confused with charm or grace. Many famous leaders have, in the absence of any obvious charm or eloquence, managed to get people to produce at high levels. Some introverts fail to be influential; some extraverts fail to be effective. The most useful criteria for "good with people" is the performance that results when an individual is working with others: does the sum exceed the total of the parts? Or would they all have been better working from separate cubicles? We are entering the season of networking: it's a perfect time to observe the difference between the people who are working the room and the people who are making the room w...
Read more

The fine line between observations, suggestions and commands

I have been watching Tony Robbins this week in the documentary called " I Am Not Your Guru ." You can read a nicely ambivalent review in the Financial Times here.   I think the ambivalence is built into the process, which might be surprising given the loud celebration that characterizes the Date with Destiny in the film. For those of us whose work has evolved from NLP, there are lessons to be learned from modelling the most famous and successful practitioner of NLP (Robbins has far surpassed all the founders by all measures of success). Because he does so much so well, Robbins lets us see how fine the line is between observing and suggesting. Let me explain. Robbins frames his "interventions" both with the exercises and performances we do not see in the film and with his invitations. The film opens with an intervention with a young man who says he is suicidal; it is only later that we see Robbins say he is looking for someone who is suicidal to work with. Since...
Read more